COPYRIGHT,  1894, 
BY  WILLIAM  H.  HILLS. 


All  Rights  Reserved. 


/W/33 
£75- 


To 
R.  E.  FRANCILLON, 

who  is  admired  and- loved  by  novel-readers  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic, 

THIS  BOOK  is  DEDICATED, 

by  his  permission,  with  sincere  regard,  by 
the  Author. 


W45167 


PREFACE. 


When  I  began  to  gather  the  material  for  this 
volume  I  was  quite  doubtful  as  to  whether  the 
public  would  be  interested  in  a  work  of  this  kind 
or  not.  As  my  labor  progressed,  however,  it 
became  evident  that  not  only  the  body  of  the 
people,  but  authors  themselves,  were  deeply 
interested  in  the  subject,  and  would  welcome 
a  book  treating  of  it.  Not  only  M.  Jules 
Claretie,  the  celebrated  Parisian  literarian,  but 
the  late  Dr.  Meissner  and  many  others  assured 
me  of  this  fact. 

Nor  is  this  very  surprising.  Who,  after  read- 
ing a  brilliant  novel,  or  some  excellent  treatise, 
would  not  like  to  know  how  it  was  written  ? 

So  far  as  I  know,  this  volume  is  a  novelty, 
and  Ben  Akiba  is  outwitted  for  once.  Books 
about  authors  have  been  published  by  the  thou- 
sands, but  to  my  knowledge,  up  to  date,  none 
have  been  issued  describing  their  .methods  of 
work. 

In  the  preparation  of  this  book  I  have  been 
greatly  aided  by  the  works  of  Rev.  Francis 
Jacox,  an  anonymous  article  in  All  the  Year 
Round,  and  R.  E.  Francillon's  essay  on  "  The 


VI  PREFACE. 

Physiology   of   Authorship,"    which    appeared 
first  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine. 

I  was  also  assisted  in  my  labor  by  numerous 
newspaper  clippings  and  many  letters  from 
writers,  whose  names  appear  in  this  volume, 
and  to  all  of  whom  I  return  my  sincere  thanks. 

H.  E. 

DETROIT,  Mich. 


CONTENTS. 


I.  Eccentricities  in  Composition. 

II.  Care  in  Literary  Production. 

III.  Speed  in  Writing. 

IV.  Influence  upon  Writers   of   Time   and 

Place. 

V.  Writing  under  Difficulties. 

VI.  Aids  to  Inspiration  —  Favorite  Habits 

of  Work. 

VII.  Goethe,  Dickens,  Schiller,  and  Scott. 

VIII.  Burning  Midnight  Oil. 

IX.  Literary  Partnership. 

X.  Anonymity  in  Authorship. 

XL  System  in  Novel  Writing. 

XII.  Traits  of  Musical  Composers. 

XIII.  The  Hygiene  of  Writing. 

XIV.  A  Humorist's  Regimen. 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 


I.    ,  >  .  •        •    •  . 

Eccentricities   in   Composition. 

The  public  —  that  is,  the  reading  world  made 
up  of  those  who  love  the  products  of  author- 
ship—  always  takes  an  interest  in  the  methods 
of  work  adopted  by  literary  men,  and  is  fond  of 
gaining  information  about  authorship  in  the  act, 
and  of  getting  a  glimpse  of  its  favorite,  the 
author,  at  work  in  that  "  sanctum  sanctorum  "  — 
the  study.  The  modes  in  which  men  write  are 
so  various  that  it  would  take  at  least  a  dozen 
volumes  to  relate  them,  were  they  all  known, 
for:  — 

"  Some  wits  are  only  in  the  mind 

When  beaux  and  belles  are  'round  them  prating  ; 
Some,  when  they  dress  for  dinner,  find 

Their  muse  and  valet  both  in  waiting  ; 
And  manage,  at  the  self-same  time, 
To  adjust  a  neckcloth  and  a  rhyme. 

"  Some  bards  there  are  who  cannot  scribble  • 

Without  a  glove  to  tear  or  nibble  ; 


10  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

Or  a  small  twig  to  whisk  about  — 

As  if  the  hidden  founts  of  fancy, 
Like  wells  of  old,  were  thus  found  out 

By  mystic  tricks  of  rhabdomancy. 

Such  was  the  little  feathery  wand, 

That,  held  forever  in  the  hand 

Of  hfr  who  von  and  wore  the  crown 

Of  female  genius  in  this  age, 
Seemed  the  conductor  that  drew  down 

Those  words  of  lightning  to  her  page." 

This  refers  to  Madame  de  Stael,  who,  when 
writing,  wielded  a  "  little  feathery  wand,"  made 
of  paper,  shaped  like  a  fan  or  feather,  in  the 
manner  and  to  the  effect  above  described. 

Well  may  the  vivacious  penman  of  "  Rhymes 
on  the  Road  "  exclaim  :  — 

"  What  various  attitudes,  and  ways, 

And  tricks  we  authors  have  in  writing ! 
While  some  write  sitting,  some,  like  Bayes, 

Usually  stand  while  they're  inditing. 
Poets  there  are  who  wear  the  floor  out, 

Measuring  a  line  at  every  stride  ; 
While  some,  like  Henry  Stephens,  pour  out 

Rhymes  by  the  dozen  while  they  ride. 
Herodotus  wrote  most  in  bed  ; 

And  Richerand,  a  French  physician, 
Declares  the  clockwork  of  the  head 

Goes  best  in  that  reclined  position. 
If  you  consult  Montaigne  and  Pliny  on 
The  subject,  .'tis  their  joint  opinion 
That  thought  its  richest  harvest  yields 
Abroad,  among  the  woods  and  fields." 

M.  de   Valois   alleges   that   Plato   produced, 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  II 

like    Herodotus,    "his   glorious    visions   all   in 
bed  " ;  while 

"  'Twas  in  his  carriage  the  sublime 
Sir  Richard  Blackmore  used  to  rhyme." 

But  little  is  known  of  the  habits  of  the  earli- 
est writers.  The  great  Plato,  whose  thoughts 
seemed  to  come  so  easy,  we  are  told,  toiled 
over  his  manuscripts,  working  with  slow  and 
tiresome  elaboration.  The  opening  sentence  of 
"  The  Republic "  on  the  author's  tablets  was 
found  to  be  written  in  thirteen  different 
versions.  When  death  called  him  from  his 
labor  the  great  philosopher  was  busy  at  his 
desk,  "combing,  and  curling,  and  weaving,  and 
unweaving  his  writings  after  a  variety  of  fash- 
ions." Virgil  was  wont  to  pour  forth  a  quan- 
tity of  verses  in  the  morning,  which  he 
decreased  to  a  very  small  number  by  incessant 
correction  and  elimination.  He  subjected  the 
products  of  his  composition  to  a  process  of 
continual  polishing  and  filing,  much  after  the 
manner,  as  he  said  himself,  of  a  bear  licking 
her  cubs  into  shape.  Cicero's  chief  pleasure 
was  literary  work.  He  declared  that  he  would 
willingly  forego  all  the  wealth  and  glory  of  the 
world  to  spend  his  time  in  meditation  or  study. 

The  diversity  in  the  methods  adopted  by 
authors  is  as  great  as  the  difference  in  their 
choice  of  subjects.  A  story  is  often  cited  in 


12  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

illustration  of  the  different  characteristics  of 
three  great  nationalities  which  equally  illus- 
trates the  different  paths  which  may  be  followed 
in  any  intellectual  undertaking. 

An  Englishman,  a  Frenchman,  and  a  Ger- 
man, competing  for  a  prize  offered  for  the  best 
essay  on  the  natural  history  of  the  camel, 
adopted  each  his  own  method  of  research  upon 
the  subject.  The  German,  providing  himself 
with  a  stock  of  tobacco,  sought  the  quiet  soli- 
tude of  his  study  in  order  to  evolve  from  the 
depths  of  his  philosophic  consciousness  the 
primitive  notion  of  a  camel.  The  Frenchman 
repaired  to  the  nearest  library,  and  overhauled 
its  contents  in  order  to  collect  all  that  other 
men  had  written  upon  the  subject.  The  Eng- 
lishman packed  his  carpet-bag  and  set  sail  for 
the  East,  that  he  might  study  the  habits  of  the 
animal  in  its  original  haunts. 

The  combination  of  these  three  methods  is 
the  perfection  of  study ;  but  the  Frenchman's 
method  is  not  unknown  even  among  Americans. 
Nor  does  it  deserve  the  condemnation  it  usually 
receives.  The  man  who  peruses  a  hundred 
books  on  a  subject  for  the  purpose  of  writing 
one  bestows  a  real  benefit  upon  society,  in  case 
he  does  his  work  well.  But  some  excellent 
work  has  been  composed  without  the  necessity 
either  of  research  or  original  investigation. 
Anthony  Trollope  described  his  famous  arch- 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  13 

deacon  without  ever  having  met  a  live  archdea- 
con. He  never  lived  in  any  cathedral  city  except 
London ;  Archdeacon  Grantly  was  the  child  of 
"  moral  consciousness  "  alone  ;  Trollope  had  no 
knowledge,  except  indirectly,  about  bishops  and 
deans.  In  fact,  "  The  Warden  "  was  not  intended 
originally  to  be  a  novel  of.  clerical  life,  but  a 
novel  which  should  work  out  a  dramatic  situa- 
tion—  that  of  a  trustworthy,  amiable  man  who 
was  the  holder,  by  no  fault  of  his  own,  of  an  en- 
dowment which  was  in  itself  an  abuse,  and  on 
whose  devoted  head  should  fall  the  thunders 
of  those  who  assailed  the  abuse. 

Bryan  Waller  Proctor,  the  poet  ( who,  I  be- 
lieve, is  better  known  under  the  name  of  "  Barry 
Cornwall  "  ),  had  never  viewed  the  ocean  when 
he  committed  to  paper  that  beautiful  poem, 
"The  Sea."  Many  of  his  finest  lyrics  and 
songs  were  composed  mentally  while  he  was 
riding  daily  to  London  in  an  omnibus.  Schiller 
had  never  been  in  Switzerland,  and  had  only 
heard  and  read  about  the  country,  when  he 
wrote  his  "William  Tell."  Harrison  Ains- 
worth,  the  Lancashire  novelist,  when  he  com- 
posed "  Rookwood  "  and  "  Jack  Sheppard,"  de- 
pended entirely  on  his  ability  to  read  up  and 
on  his  facility  of  assimilation,  for  during  his 
lifetime  he  never  came  in  personal  contact  with 
thieves  at  all.  It  is  said  that  when  he  wrote  the 
really  admirable  ride  of  Turpin  to  York  he 


14  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

only  went  at  a  great  pace  over  the  paper,  with  a 
road-map  and  description  of  the  country  in  front 
of  him.  It  was  only  when  he  heard  all  the 
world  say  how  faithfully  the  region  was  pictured, 
and  how  truly  he  had  observed  distances  and 
localities,  that  he  actually  drove  over  the  ground 
for  the  first  time,  and  declared  that  it  was  more 
like  his  account  than  he  could  have  imagined. 

Erasmus  composed  on  horseback,  as  he 
pricked  across  the  country,  and  committed  his 
thoughts  to  paper  as  soon  as  he  reached  his 
next  inn.  In  this  way  he  composed  his  "  En- 
comium Moriae,"  or  "  Praise  of  Folly,"  in  a 
journey  from  Italy  to  the  land  of  the  man  to 
whose  name  that  title  bore  punning  and  com- 
plimentary reference,  his  sterling  friend  and 
ally,  Sir  Thomas  More. 

Aubrey  relates  how  Hobbes  composed  his 
"  Leviathan  ":  "  He  walked  much  and  mused  as 
he  walked  ;  and  he  had  in  the  head  of  his  cane  a 
pen  and  inkhorn,  and  he  carried  always  a  note- 
book in  his  pocket,  and  '  as  soon  as  the  thought 
darted,'  he  presently  entered  it  into  his  book,  or 
otherwise  might  have  lost  it.  He  had  drawn 
the  design  of  the  book  into  chapters,  etc.,  and 
he  knew  whereabouts  it  would  come  in." 
Hartley  Coleridge  somewhere  expresses  his 
entire  conviction  that  it  was  Pope's  general 
practice  to  set  down  in  a  book  every  line,  half- 
line,  or  lucky  phrase  that  occurred  to  him,  and 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  15 

either  to  find  or  make  a  place  for  them  when 
and  where  he  could.  Richard  Savage  noted  down 
a  whole  tragedy  on  scraps  of  paper  at  the  coun- 
ters of  shops,  into  which  he  entered  and  asked 
for  pen  and  ink  as  if  to  make  a  memorandum. 

"A  man  would  do  well  to  carry  a  pencil  in 
his  pocket,  and  write  down  the  thoughts  of  the 
moment.  Those  that  come  unsought  are  gen- 
erally the  most  valuable,  and  should  be  secured, 
because  they  seldom  return."  This  was  the 
advice  of  Lord  Bacon,  whose  example  has  been 
followed  by  many  eminent  men.  Miss  Mar- 
ti neau  has  recorded  that  Barry  Cornwall's 
favorite  method  of  composition  was  practised 
when  alone  in  a  crowd.  He,  like  Savage,  also 
had  a  habit  of  running  into  a  shop  to  write 
down  his  verses.  Tom  Moore's  custom  was  to 
compose  as  he  walked.  He  had  a  table  in  his 
garden,  on  which  he  wrote  down  his  thoughts. 
When  the  weather  was  bad,  he  paced  up  and 
down  his  small  study.  It  is  extremely  desir- 
able that  thoughts  should  be  written  as  they 
rise  in  the  mind,  because,  if  they  are  not  re- 
corded at  the  time,  they  may  never  return.  "  I 
attach  so  much  importance  to  the  ideas  which 
come  during-  the  night,  or  in  the  morning,"  says 
Gaston  Plante,  the  electrical  engineer,  "  that  I 
have  always,  at  the  head  of  my  bed,  paper  and 
pencil  suspended  by  a  string,  by  the  help  of 
which  I  write  every  morning  the  ideas  I  have 


l6  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

been  able  to  conceive,  particularly  upon  sub- 
jects of  scientific  research.  I  write  these  notes 
in  obscurity,  and  decipher  and  develop  them 
in  the  morning,  pen  in  hand."  The  philoso- 
pher Emerson  took  similar  pains  to  catch  a 
fleeting  thought,  for,  whenever  he  had  a  happy 
idea,  he  wrote  it  down,  and  when  Mrs.  Emer- 
son, startled  in  the  night  by  some  unusual 
sound,  cried,  "  What  is  the  matter?  Are  you 
ill?"  the  philosopher  softly  replied,  "No,  my 
dear  ;  only  an  idea." 

U-  George  Bancroft,  the  historian,  had  a  similar 
habit.  His  bedroom  served  also  as  a  library. 
The  room  was  spacious,  and  its  walls  were  lined, 
above  and  below,  with  volumes.  A  single  bed 
stood  in  the  middle  of  the  apartment,  and  beside 
the  bed  were  paper,  pencil,  two  wax  candles,  and 
matches  ;  so  that,  like  Mr.  Pecksniff,  Mr.  Ban- 
croft might  not  forget  any  idea  that  came  into 
his  mind  in  a  wakeful  moment  of  the  night. 

As  curious  a  mode  of  composition  as  per- 
haps any  on  record,  if  the  story  be  credible,  is 
that  affirmed  of  Fuller  —  that  he  used  to  write 
the  first  words  of  every  line  near  the  margin 
down  to  the  foot  of  the  paper,  and  that  then, 
beginning  again,  he  filled  up  the  blanks  ex- 
actly, without  spaces,  interlineations,  or  con- 
tractions, and  that  he  would  so  connect  the 
ends  and  beginnings  that  the  sense  would 
appear  as  complete  as  if  it  had  been  written  in 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  IJ 

a  continued  series  after  the  ordinary  manner. 

Several  distinguished  American  writers  have 
the  habit  of  jotting  a  sentence,  or  a  line  or  two 
here  and  there,  upon  a  long  page,  and  then  fill- 
ing up  the  outline  thus  made  with  persistent 
revision. 

With  some  great  writers,  it  has  been  custo- 
mary to  do  a  vast  amount  of  antecedent  work  be- 
fore beginning  their  books.  It  is  related  of 
George  Eliot  that  she  read  one  thousand  */ 
books  before  she  wrote  "  Daniel  Deronda." 
For  two  or  three  years  before  she  composed  a 
work,  she  read  up  her  subject  in  scores  and 
scores  of  volumes.  She  was  one  of  the  mas- 
ters, so  called,  of  all  learning,  talking  with 
scholars  and  men  of  science  on  terms  of  equal- 
ity. George  Eliot  was  a  hard  worker,  and,  like 
many  gifted  writers,  she  was  often  tempted  to 
burn  at  night  the  lines  she  had  written  during 
the  day.  Carlyle  was  similarly  tempted,  and  it 
is  to  be  regretted  that  the  great  growler,  in 
many  instances,  did  not  carry  out  the  design. 
Carlyle  spent  fifteen  years  on  his  "  Frederick  ^ 
the  Great."  Alison  perused  two  thousand 
books  before  he  completed  his  celebrated  his- 
tory. It  is  said  of  another  that  he  read  twenty 
thousand  volumes  and  wrote  only  two  books. 
"  For  the  statistics  of  the  negro  population  of 
South  America  alone,"  says  Robert  Dale 
Owen,  "I  examined  more  than  150  volumes." 


18  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

David  Livingstone  said :  "  Those  who  have  never 
carried  a  book  through  the  press  can  form  no 
idea  of  the  amount  of  toil  it  involves.  The 
process  has  increased  my  respect  for  authors  a 
thousandfold.  I  think  I  would  rather  cross  the 
African  continent  again  than  to  undertake  to 
write  another  book." 

Thackeray  confessed  that  the  title  for  his 
novel,  "  Vanity  Fair,"  came  to  him  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  night,  and  that  he  jumped  out  of  bed 
and  ran  three  times  around  the  room,  shouting 
the  words.  Thackeray  had  no  literary  system. 
He  wrote  only  when  he  felt  like  it.  Sometimes 
he  was  unable  to  write  two  lines  in  succession. 
Then,  again,  he  could  sit  down  and  write  so 
rapidly  that  he  would  keep  three  sheets  in  the 
wind  all  the  time.  While  he  was  editor  of  the 
Cornhill  Magazine  he  never  succeeded  in  get- 
ting copy  enough  ahead  for  more  than  five 
issues.  In  this  negligence  he  fell  far  behind  the 
magazine  editors  of  the  present  time.  They 
always  have  bundles  of  copy  on  hand. 


II. 

Care  in  Literary  Production. 

Indolence,  that  is  to  say,  chronic  fatigue,  ap- 
pears to  be  the  natural  habit  of  imaginative 
brains.  It  is  a  commonplace  to  note  that  men 
of  fertile  fancy,  as  a  class,  have  been  notorious 
for  their  horror  of  formulating  their  ideas  even 
by  the  toil  of  thought,  much  more  by  passing 
them  through  the  crucible  of  the  ink-bottle.  In 
many  cases  they  have  needed  the  very  active 
stimulant  of  hunger.  The  cacoethes  scribendi 
is  a  disease  common,  not  to  imaginative,  but 
to  imitative,  minds.  Probably  no  hewer  of  wood 
or  drawer  of  water  undergoes  a  tithe  of  the  toil 
of  those  whose  work  is  reputed  play,  but  is,  in 
fact,  a  battle,  every  moment,  between  the  flesh 
and  the  spirit.  Campbell,  who  at  the  age  of 
sixty-one  could  drudge  at  an  unimaginative 
work  for  fourteen  hours  a  day  like  a  galley- 
slave,  "and  yet,"  as  he  says  in  one  of  his  letters, 
"  be  as  cheerful  as  a  child,"  speaks  in  a  much 
less  happy  tone  of  the  work  which  alone  was 
congenial  to  him  :  "  The  truth  is,  I  am  not 
writing  poetry,  but  projecting  it,  and  that  keeps 
me  more  idle  and  abstracted  than  you  can  con- 
ceive. I  pass  hours  thinking  about  what  I  am 
to  compose.  The  actual  time  employed  in  com- 


2O  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

position  is  but  a  fraction  of  the  time  lost  in 
setting  about  it."  "  At  Glasgow,"  we  read  of 
him  even  when  a  young  man,  "  he  seldom  exer- 
cised his  gift  except  when  roused  into  action 
either  by  the  prospect  of  gaining  a  prize  or  by 
some  striking  incident"  Campbell,  if  not  a 
great  man,  was  a  typical  worker. 

A  playwright,  who  had  written  five  hundred 
lines  in  three  days,  taunted  Euripides  because 
he  had  spent  as  much  time  upon  five  lines. 
"  Yes,"  replied  the  poet,  "  but  your  five  hun- 
dred lines  in  three  days  will  be  forgotten,  while 
my  five  will  live  forever." 

It  is  said  of  one  of  Longfellow's  poems  that 
it  was  written  in  four  weeks,  but  that  he  spent 
six  months  in  correcting  and  cutting  it  down. 
Longfellow  was  a  very  careful  writer.  He 
wrote  and  rewrote,  and  laid  his  work  by  and 
later  revised  it.  He  often  consulted  his  friends 
about  his  productions  before  they  were  given 
to  the  world.  Thus  he  sent  his  work  out  as 
perfect  as  great  care  and  a  brilliant  intellect 
could  make  it.  The  poet's  pleasant  surround- 
ings must  have  acted  as  a  stimulus  upon  his 
mind.  His  library  was  a  long  room  in  the 
northeastern  corner  of  the  lower  floor  in  the 
so-called  Craigie  House,  once  the  residence  of 
General  Washington.  It  was  walled  with 
handsome  bookcases,  rich  in  choice  works. 
The  poet's  usual  seat  here  was  at  a  little  high 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  21 

table  by  the  north  window,  looking  upon  the 
garden.  Some  of  his  work  was  done  while  he 
was  standing  at  this  table,  which  reached  then 
to  his  breast. 

Emerson  wrote  with  great  care,  and  would 
not  only  revise  hr,s  manuscript  carefully,  but 
frequently  rewrite  the  article  upon  the  proof- 
sheets. 

John  Owen  was  twenty  years  on  his  "  Com- 
mentary on  the  Epistle  of  the  Hebrews." 

The  celebrated  French  critic,  Sainte-Beuve, 
was  accustomed  to  devote  six  days  to  the  prep- 
aration of  a  single  one  of  his  weekly  articles. 
A  large  portion  of  his  time  was  passed  in  the  re- 
tirement of  his  chamber,  to  which,  on  such  occa- 
sions, no  one  —  with  the  exception  of  his  favor- 
ite servant  —  was  allowed  to  enter  under  any 
circumstances  whatever.  Here  he  wrote  those 
critical  papers  which  carried  captive  the  heart 
of  France,  and  filled  with  wonder  cultivated 
minds  everywhere. 

The  historian  Gibbon,  in  speaking  of  the  man- 
ner in  which  he  wrote  his  "  Decline  and  Fall  of 
the  Roman  Empire,"  said  :  "  Many  experiments 
were  made  before  I  could  hit  the  middle  tone 
between  a  dull  tone  and  a  rhetorical  declama- 
tion. Three  times  did  I  compose  the  first  chap- 
ter, and  twice  the  second  and  third,  before  I 
was  tolerably  satisfied  with  their  effect."  Gib- 
bon spent  twenty  years  on  his  immortal  book 


22  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

Lamb  toiled  most  laboriously  over  his  essays. 
These  papers,  which  long  ago  took  their  place 
in  the  English  classical  language  and  which 
are  replete  with  the  most  delicate  fancies,  were 
composed  with  the  most  exacting  nicety,  yet 
their  author  is  regarded  the  world  over  as  pos- 
sessed of  genius  of  a  high  order. 

La  Rochefoucauld  was  occupied  for  the  space 
of  fifteen  years  in  preparing  for  publication  his 
little  work  called  "  Maximes,"  rewriting  many 
of  them  more  than  thirty  times. 

Honors'  de  Balzac  had  just  completed  his 
teens  when  he  arrived  in  Paris,  and  till  1830, 
some  nine  years,  he  lived,  not  in  a  garret,  but 
in  the  apartment  over  that,  called  a  gr enter j 
his  daily  expenses  amounted  to  about  half  a 
franc  —  three  sous  for  bread,  three  for  milk, 
and  the  rest  for  firewood  and  candles.  He 
passed  his  days  in  the  public  library  of  the 
Arsenal,  devouring  books.  In  the  evening  he 
transcribed  his  notes,  and  during  the  nights  he 
took  his  walks  abroad,  and  so  gained  an  insight 
into  the  depths  of  human  depravity. 

After  his  first  novel,  in  1830,  he  commenced 
earning  money.  Balzac,  who  had  the  disease 
of  creative  genius  in  its  most  outrageous  form, 
"  preached  to  us,"  says  Thdophile  Gautier,  "  the 
strangest  hygiene  ever  propounded  among  lay- 
men. If  we  desired  to  hand  our  names  down  to 
posterity  as  authors,  it  was  indispensable  that 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  23 

we  should  immure  ourselves  absolutely  for  two 
or  three  years  ;  that  we  should  drink  nothing 
but  water,  and  eat  only  soaked  beans,  like 
Protogenes  ;  that  we  should  go  to  bed  at  sunset 
and  rise  at  midnight,  to  work  hard  till  morning ; 
that  we  should  spend  the  whole  day  in  revising, 
amending,  extending,  pruning,  perfecting,  and 
polishing  our  night's  work,  in  correcting  proofs 
or  taking  notes,  or  in  other  necessary  study." 
If  the  author  happened  to  be  in  love,  he  was 
to  see  the  lady  of  his  heart  only  for  one  half- 
hour  a  year,  but  he  might  write  to  her,  for  the 
cold-blooded  reason  that  letter-writing  improves 
the  style.  Not  only  did  Balzac  preach  this 
austere  doctrine,  but  he  practised  it  as  nearly 
as  he  could  without  ceasing  altogether  to  be  a 
man  and  a  Frenchman.  Ldon  Gozlan's  ac- 
count of  the  daily  life  of  the  author  of  the 
"  Come'die  Humaine  "  has  often  been  quoted. 
On  the  average  he  worked  eighteen  hours  a 
day.  He  began  his  day  with  dinner  at  six  in 
the  afternoon,  at  which,  while  he  fed  his  friends 
generously,  he  himself  ate  little  besides  fruit 
and  drank  nothing  but  water.  At  seven  o'clock 
he  wished  his  friends  good-night,  and  went  to 
bed.  At  midnight  he  rose  and  worked  — till 
dinner-time  next  day :  and  so  the  world  went 
round.  George  Sand  calls  him,  "  Drunk  on 
water,  intemperate  in  work,  and  sober  in  all 
other  passions."  Jules  Janin  asks,  "  Where  has 


24  METHODS    OF    AUTHORS. 

M.  de  Balzac  gained  his  knowledge  of  woman  — 
he,  the  anchorite?"  As  it  was,  love  and  death 
came  to  him  hand-in-hand.  He  married  a 
wealthy  Polish  lady  in  1848.  They  travelled 
over  the  battlefields  of  Europe,  to  collect  notes 
for  a  work,  and  then  settled  down  in  a  luxurious 
mansion  in  the  Champs  Elyse'es.  Nothing  was 
wanting  in  that  palatial  residence,  for  every 
fancy  of  Balzac  had  been  gratified.  Three 
months  after  the  house-warming  Balzac  was 
dead. 

Balzac,  after  he  had  made  a  plan  of  a  novel, 
and  had,  after  the  most  laborious  research, 
gathered  together  the  materials  which  he  was  to 
embody  in  it,  locked  himself  in  his  private  apart- 
ment, shut  out  all  the  light  of  day,  and  then,  by 
the  aid  of  his  study  lamp,  he  toiled  day  and 
night.  His  servants,  knowing  so  well  his  pe- 
culiar habits,  brought  him  food  and  drink. 
Finally,  with  his  task  completed,  as  he  thought, 
he  came  forth  from  his  retirement  looking  more 
dead  than  alive.  But  invariably  his  task  was 
not  altogether  satisfactory  to  him,  after  all,  for 
again  he  would  seek  the  seclusion  of  his  cham- 
ber to  rearrange  and  make  more  perfect  that 
which  he  had  before  supposed  wholly  complete. 
Then,  too,  when  his  work  was  in  the  hands  of 
the  printer,  he  was  as  apt  as  not  to  alter,  in  one 
way  and  another,  the  manuscript,  until  both 
printer  and  publisher  were  on  the  verge  of  de- 


METHODS   OF  AUTHORS.  25 

spair.  He  corrected  up  to  as  many  as  twelve 
proofs,  and  many  of  his  "  corrections  "  consisted 
in  rewriting  whole  pages.  What  "copy"  he 
must  have  produced  during  the  twenty  years 
in  which  he  brought  out  ninety-seven  volumes ! 
Like  Voltaire,  Balzac  had  a  passion  for  coffee, 
more  to  keep  him  awake  than  as  a  stimulant. 
That  beverage  shortened  his  life,  which  ended 
by  hypertrophy  of  the  heart.  When  he  sat 
down  to  his  desk,  his  servant,  who  regarded  a 
man  that  abstained  even  from  tobacco  as 
scarcely  human,  used  to  place  coffee  within 
reach,  and  upon  this  he  worked  till  his  full 
brain  would  drive  his  starved  and  almost  sleep- 
less body  into  such  forgetfulness  that  he  often 
found  himself  at  daybreak  bareheaded,  in  dress- 
ing gown  and  slippers,  in  the  Place  du  Carrou- 
sel, not  knowing  how  he  came  there,  miles 
away  from  home.  Now,  coffee  acts  upon  some 
temperaments  as  laudanum  acts  upon  others,  and 
many  of  the  manners  and  customs  of  Balzac 
were  those  of  a  confirmed  opium-eater.  He  had 
the  same  strange  illusions,  the  same  extravagant 
ideas,  the  same  incapacity  for  distinguishing 
with  regard  to  outward  things,  between  the  pos- 
sible and  the  impossible,  the  false  and  the  true. 
His  midnight  wanderings,  his  facility  in  pro- 
jecting himself  into  personalities  utterly  unlike 
his  own,  belong  to  the  experiences  of  the  "  Eng- 
lish Opium-eater." 


26  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

Kinglake's  beautiful  "  Eothen "  was  rewrit- 
ten half  a  dozen  times  before  it  was  given  to  a 
publisher. 

Tennyson's  song,  "  Come  Into  the  Garden, 
Maud,"  was  rewritten  some  fifty  times  before 
it  gave  complete  satisfaction  to  the  author. 

Coming  to  the  gifted  Addison,  whose  diction 
is  full  of  such  grace  and  simplicity,  so  much  so 
as  to  create  envy,  yet  admiration,  in  the  mind 
of  every  writer  who  has  flourished  since  his 
day,  we  find  that  the  great  author  wrote  with 
the  most  painful  deliberation.  It  is  narrated 
that  the  press  was  stopped  again  and  again, 
after  a  whole  edition  of  the  Spectator  had  been 
thrown  off,  in  order  that  its  author  might  make 
a  slight  change  in  a  sentence. 

Tom  Moore,  with  all  his  wonderful  brilliancy, 
considered  it  doing  very  well  if  he  wrote  fifty 
lines  of  his  "  Lalla  Rookh  "  in  a  week. 

Hawthorne  was  slow  in  composing.  Some- 
times he  wrote  only  what  amounted  to  half  a 
dozen  pages  a  week,  often  only  a  few  lines  in 
the  same  space  of  time,  and,  alas  !  he  frequently 
went  to  his  chamber  and  took  up  his  pen,  only 
to  find  himself  wholly  unable  to  perform  any 
literary  work. 

The  author  of  "Pleasures  of  Hope"  was 
slow  of  thought,  and  consequently  his  mode  of 
composition  was  toilsome  in  the  highest  degree. 
He  wrote  with  extreme  caution,  weighing 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  27 

and  shaping  the  effect  of  each  particular  line 
before  he  permitted  it  to  stand. 

Bret  Harte,  whose  creations  read  as  if  they 
had  come  from  his  brain  without  a  flaw  or  hin- 
drance, showing  brilliancy  of  thought  with  the 
grace  of  the  artist,  is  still  another  writer  who 
passes  days  and  weeks  on  a  short  story  or  poem 
before  he  is  ready  to  deliver  it  into  the  hands 
of  the  printer.  So  it  was  with  Bryant.  Though 
in  reality  the  sum  total  of  his  poetry  might  be 
included  in  a  small  volume,  so  few  are  his 
lyrics,  we  cannot  fail  to  be  impressed  with  the 
truth  of  the  statement  when  we  are  told  that 
even  these  few  gems  of  verse  cost  our  late 
Wordsworth  hard  toil  to  bring  into  being,  and 
endow  with  the  splendor  of  immortality. 

Bernardine  de  St.  Pierre  copied  his  sweet  and 
beautiful  "  Paul  and  Virginia "  nine  times  to 
make  it  more  perfect. 

Bdranger  composait  toutes  ses  chansons  dans 
sa  tete.  "Once  made,  I  committed  them  to 
writing  in  order  to  forget  them,"  he  said.  He 
tells  of  having  dreamt  for  ten  years  of  a  song 
about  the  taxes  that  weigh  down  the  rural  popu- 
lation. In  vain  he  tapped  his  brain-pan, — 
nothing  came  of  it.  But  one  night  he  awoke 
with  the  air  and  the  refrain  tout  trouves  : 

"  Jacques,  l&ve-toi ; 
Voici  venir  1'huissier  du  roi  "  ; 

and  in  a  day  or  two  the  song  was  a  made  thing. 
The  laborious  pains  bestowed  by  Alfieri  on 


28  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

the  process  of  composition  may  seem  at  first 
sight  hard  to  reconcile  with  his  impulsive  char- 
acter. If  he  approved  his  first  sketch  of  a 
piece,  —  after  laying  it  by  for  some  time,  not 
approaching  it  again  until  his  mind  was  free 
of  the  subject,  —  he  submitted  it  to  what  he 
called  "development,"  i.  e.t  writing  out  in  prose 
the  indicated  scenes,  with  all  the  force  at  his 
command,  but  without  stopping  to  analyze  a 
thought  or  correct  an  expression.  "  He  then 
proceeded  to  versify  at  his  leisure  the  prose  he 
had  written,  selecting  with  care  the  ideas  he 
thought  best,  and  rejecting  those  which  he 
deemed  "  unworthy  of  a  place.  Nor  did  he  ever 
yet  regard  this  work  as  finished,  but  "inces- 
santly polished  it  verse  by  verse  and  made  con- 
tinual alterations,"  as  might  seem  to  him  ex- 
pedient. 

Hartley  Coleridge  so  far  resembled  Alfieri 
that  it  was  his  custom  to  put  aside  what  he  had 
written  for  some  months,  till  the  heat  and  ex- 
citement of  composition  had  effervesced,  and 
then  he  thought  it  was  in  a  fair  condition  to 
criticise.  But  he  seldom  altered.  "  Strike 
the  nail  on  the  anvil,"  was  his  advice ;  he  never 
"  kneaded  or  pounded "  his  thoughts,  which 
have  been  described  as  always  coming  out  cap-a- 
pie,  like  a  troop  in  quick  march.  He  used  to 
brandish  his  pen  in  the  act  of  composition, 
now  and  then  beating  time  with  his  foot,  and 
breaking  out  into  a  shout  at  any  felicitous  idea. 


III. 

Speed  in  Writing. 

Dr.  Johnson  was  a  very  rapid  writer.  A  mod- 
ern critic  says  of  him  :  "  He  had  but  to  dip 
his  pen  in  ink,  and  there  flowed  out  a  current 
of  thought  and  language  wide  and  voluminous 
as  the  Ganges  in  flood."  Some  of  the  best 
papers  in  the  Rambler  were  written  "  currente 
calamo"  Johnson  struck  off  his  Ramblers  and 
Idlers  at  a  heat  when  the  summons  of  the  press 
forbade  his  indolence  to  put  off  his  work 
another  moment :  he  did  not  give  himself  even 
a  minute  to  read  over  his  papers  before  they 
went  to  the  printers.  Often  he  sent  a  portion 
of  the  copy  of  an  essay,  and  wrote  the  remain- 
der while  the  earlier  part  was  printing.  His 
"  Life  of  Savage  "  was  dashed  off  at  one  sitting. 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  was  so  fascinated  with  this 
eloquent  and  touching  narrative,  that  he  could 
not  lay  it  down  until  he  had  finished  it.  John- 
son would  not  have  written  "  Rasselas  "  except 
for  the  necessity  of  paying  the  costs  of  his 
mother's  funeral.  He  was  an  extremely  indo- 
lent man,  and  yet  he  was  a  laborious  worker 
where  the  imagination  was  not  concerned.  Af- 
ter spending  the  evening  at  the  literary  club  in 
the  society  of  Burke,  Goldsmith,  and  other 


30  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

friends,  he  returned  home  between  midnight 
and  sunrise,  went  to  bed,  and  was  seldom  seen 
before  noon.  Bennet  Langton  was  so  delighted 
with  the  Rambler,  that  he  went  to  London  to 
be  introduced  to  Johnson.  He  called  upon  him 
about  twelve  o'clock,  but  the  great  doctor  was 
not  yet  visible.  After  waiting  some  time,  the 
author  of  the  Rambler  made  his  appearance. 
The  visitor  expected  to  see  a  neatly  dressed 
philosopher,  but,  instead,  a  huge,  uncouth  figure 
rolled  into  the  room  in  a  soiled  morning-g^wn, 
with  an  ill-arranged  wig,  and  stockings  falling 
over  his  shoes. 

The  elder  Dumas,  in  order  to  get  any  work 
done  at  all,  had  to  forbid  himself,  by  an  effort 
of  will,  to  leave  his  desk  before  a  certain  num- 
ber of  pages  were  written.  Victor  Hugo  is  said 
to  have  locked  up  his  clothes  while  writing 
"  Notre-Dame,"  so  that  he  might  not  escape 
from  it  till  the  last  word  was  written.  In  such 
cases  the  so-called  "  pleasures  of  imagination  " 
look  singularly  like  the  pains  of  stone-breaking. 
The  hardest  part  of  the  lot  of  genius,  we  sus- 
pect, has  been  not  the  emotional  troubles  pop- 
ularly—  and  with  absurd  exaggeration  —  as- 
cribed to  it,  but  a  disgust  for  labor  during  the 
activity  of  the  fancy,  and  the  necessity  for  labor 
when  it  is  most  disgusting. 

Victor  Hugo  composed  with  wonderful  rapid- 
ity. He  wrote  his  "  Cromwell  "  in  three  months, 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  31 

and  his  "  Notre  Dame  de  Paris  "  in  four  months 
and  a  half.  But  even  these  have  been  his  long- 
est periods  of  labor,  and  as  he  grew  older  he 
wrote  faster.  "Marion  Delorme  "  was  finished 
in  twenty-four  days,  "  Hernani  "  in  twenty-six, 
and  "  Le  Roi  s'amuse  "  in  twenty.  Although 
the  poet  wrote  very  quickly,  he  often  corrected 
laboriously.  He  rarely  rewrote.  Mme.  Drouet, 
who  was  his  literary  secretary  for  thirty 
years,  copied  all  his  manuscripts.  Otherwise 
the  printers  would  have  found  him  one  of  the 
most  difficult  authors  to  put  into  type.  Mme. 
Drouet  saved  them  much  worry,  and  himself  or 
his  publishers  much  expense  in  the  way  of  com- 
position. She  also  assisted  in  the  correction  of 
the  proofs.  He  generall)  had  several  works  in 
the  stocks  at  the  same  time.  Hugo  considered 
a  change  of  subject  a  recreation.  He  would  go 
from  poetry  to  fiction,  from  fiction  to  history, 
according  to  his  mood.  As  a  rule,  he  rose  at 
six  o'clock  in  the  morning,  took  a  cold  bath, 
then  took  a  raw  egg  and  a  cup  of  black  coffee, 
and  went  to  work.  He  never  sat  down  to  write, 
but  stood  at  a  high  desk,  and  refreshed  himself 
by  an  occasional  turn  across  the  room,  and  a  sip 
of  eau  sucrte.  He  breakfasted  at  eleven.  One 
of  his  recreations  was  riding  on  the  top  of  an 
omnibus,  a  habit  he  contracted  during  a  short 
visit  to  London,  when  he  was  advised  that  "  the 
knife-board "  was  a  good  place  from  which  to 


32  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

see  the  street  life  of  the  English  metropolis. 
The  "knife-board,"  indeed,  was  his  favorite  point 
of  observation,  whence  he  gathered  inspiration 
from  the  passing  crowds  below.  Many  of  his 
famous  characters  have  been  caught  in  his 
mind's  eye  while  taking  a  three-sou  drive  from 
the  Arc  de  Triomphe  to  the  Bastile. 

It  is  on  record  that  Bulwer  wrote  his  ro- 
mance of  "  Harold  "  in  less  than  a  month,  resting 
not  at  all  by  day,  and  scarcely  at  night.  In  a 
private  letter  Lord  Lytton  says  :  "  The  novel 
of  *  Harold '  was  written  in  rather  less  than 
four  weeks.  I  can  personally  attest  this  fact, 
as  1  was  with  my  father  when  he  wrote  it  —  on 
a  visit  to  his  friend,  the  late  Mr.  Tennyson 
D'Eyncourt.  D'Eyncourt  was  a  great  collector 
of  Norman  and  Anglo-Saxon  chronicles,  with 
which  his  library  was  well  stored.  The  notes 
of  research  for  *  Harold '  fill  several  thick  com- 
monplace books.  .  .  .  While  my  father  was 
writing  'Harold'  I  do  not  think  he  put 
down  his  pen  except  for  meals  and  half  an 
hour's  run  before  dinner  'round  the  terrace. 
He  was  at  work  the  greater  part  of  every  night, 
and  again  early  in  the  morning." 

It  is  an  interesting  fact  in  regard  to  Lord 
Tennyson's  drama  on  the  same  subject — with 
a  dedication  to  the  late  Lord  Lytton,  in 
reconciliation  of  an  old  literary  feud  with  his 
father  —  that  the  first  sketch  of  "  Harold  "  took 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  33 

the  form  of  a  drama,  entitled  "William  the 
Norman."  It  was  probably  not  written  for 
publication,  ;;s  the  writer's  way  of  composing 
many  of  his  prose  romances  was  to  sketch  them 
out  first  as  dramas. 

The  "  Lady  of  Lyons "  was  written  in  ten 
days.  It  was  by  no  means  uncommon  with 
Bulwer  to  have  two  books  in  hand  at  once,  and 
live  alternate  periods  with  the  beings  of  his 
creation,  as  if  he  were  passing  in  society  from 
one  company  to  another.  Thus  "  Lucretia " 
and  "  The  Caxtons,"  "  Kenelm  Chillingly  "  and 
"  The  Parisians,"  were  written  simultaneously. 
But  despite  his  literary  facility,  Bulwer  rewrote 
some  of  his  briefer  productions  as  many  as 
eight  or  nine  times  before  their  publication. 
Another  author  tells  us  that  he  wrote  paragraphs 
and  whole  pages  of  his  book  as  many  as  fifty 
times. 

Byron  wrote  the  "  Bride  of  Abydos "  in  a 
single  night,  and  the  quill  pen  with  which  he 
performed  this  marvellous  feat  is  still  preserved 
in  the  British  Museum. 

Dryden  wrote  "  Alexander's  Feast  "  in  two 
days. 

"  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  "  was  com- 
posed in  a  fortnight. 

Becktord  finished  "  Vathek  "  in  two  days  and 
nights. 

Henry  Ward   Beecher's  publishers  have  fa- 


34  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

vored  the  world  with  an  account  of  his  habits 
in  composition.  "  He  wrote,"  they  tell  us, 
"  with  inconceivable  rapidity,  in  a  large,  sprawl- 
ing hand,  lines  wide  apart,  and  words  so  thinly 
scattered  about  that  some  of  the  pages  remind 
one  of  the  famous  description  of  a  page  of  Na- 
poleon's manuscript  —  a  scratch,  a  blot, 'and  a 
splutter."  This  is,  indeed,  remarkable,  but  is 
far  exceeded  by  the  performance  in  that  line  of 
a  famous  Chinese  novelist,  who  wrote  with  such 
fearful  speed,  that,  throwing  the  finished  sheets 
over  his  head,  they  soon  accumulated  to  a  pile 
large  enough  to  darken  his  windows,  and 
threaten  him  with  suffocation. 

Horace,  in  one  of  his  satires,  makes  fun  of  a 
contemporary  poet,  whose  chief  claim  to  dis- 
tinction was  that  he  could  compose  two  hun- 
dred verses  standing  on  one  leg.  Horace  did 
not  think  much  of  the  verses,  and,  we  suspect 
with  good  reason. 

There  are  all  conceivable  habits  of  composi- 
tion, and  they  range  from  the  slow  elaboration 
of  John  Foster  to  the  race-horse  speed  of  our 
doughty  Southern  countryman,  Henry  A.  Wise, 
whose  prodigious  gubernatorial  compositions 
are  still  remembered  by  a  suffering  world. 
Once,  sitting  by  James  Parton,  he  observed, 
tersely,  "  The  best  writing  distils  from  the  pen 
drop  by  drop."  Sheridan  once  said  to  a 
friend  who  had  a  fatal  facility  with  his  pen, 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  35 

"  Your  easy  writing  makes  terribly  hard 
reading." 

I  would  not,  for  the  world,  have  the  young 
men  of  the  country  believe  that  in  writing 
speed  is  all.  One  should  not  be  ambitious  to 
write  or  do  anything  else  any  faster  than  he 
can  do  it  well.  It  was  Henry  Wadsworth 
Longfellow  who  once  gave  this  excellent  ad- 
vice to  a  young  author :  "  Always  write  your 
best ;  remember,  your  best." 

Wilkie  Collins'  book,  "  Heart  and  Science," 
so  mercilessly  excited  him  that  he  says  he  con- 
tinued writing  week  after  week  without  a  day's 
interval  or  rest.  "  Rest  was  impossible.  I  made 
a  desperate  effort;  rushed  to  the  sea;  went 
sailing  and  fishing,  and  was  writing  my  book 
all  the  time  '  in  my  head,'  as  the  children  say. 
The  one  wise  course  to  take  was  to  go  back  to 
my  desk  and  empty  my  head,  and  then  rest. 
My  nerves  are  too  much  shaken  for  travelling. 
An  armchair  and  a  cigar,  and  a  hundred  and 
fiftieth  reading  of  the  glorious  Walter  Scott,  — 
King,  Emperor,  and  President  of  Novel- 
ists,—  there  is  the  regimen  that  is  doing  me 
good.  All  the  other  novel-writers  I  can  read 
while  I  am  at  work  myself.  If  I  only  look 
at  the  'Antiquary'  or  'Old  Mortality,'  I  am 
crushed  by  the  sense  of  my  own  littleness,  and 
there  is  no  work  possible  for  me  on  that  day." 

Wilkie  Collins  made  the  skeleton  of  a  novel 


36  METHODS   OF  AUTHORS. 

and  then  proceeded  to  put  the  flesh  on  it.  He  was 
the  greatest  plotter  that  ever  lived.  He  created 
no  truly  great  characters,  but  his  stories  are 
full  of  thrilling  pitfalls,  into  which  the  reader 
lunges. 

Hugo  Rosenthal-Bonin,  the  editor  of  Ueber 
Land  und  Meer  (  one  of  the  most  prominent  of 
the  illustrated  journals  of  Germany),  and  the 
author  of  many  successful  novels,  writes  for 
two  hours  immediately  after  breakfast  and  din- 
ner, and  within  this  time  regularly  composes 
five  columns  of  reading  matter,  never  rewriting 
a  single  line.  While  writing,  he  has  a  piece  of 
looking-glass  lying  beside  him,  the  glittering  of 
which  (so  he  says)  stimulates  and  refreshes 
him;  he  also  smokes  cigars  during  working 
hours,  otherwise  seldom.  He  works  with  ease 
and  rapidity,  just  as  if  he  were  speaking. 
Therefore,  a  novel  of  ten  columns  is  finished 
within  two  days,  and  a  romance  of  one  hundred 
columns  is  completed  in  less  than  a  month.  He 
has  never  written  more  than  one  long  novel  a 
year,  his  literary  productiveness  being  limited 
by  his  duties  as  editor. 

Mrs.  Helen  Hunt  Jackson  ( "  H.  H."  )  com- 
posed with  great  rapidity,  writing  on  large 
sheets  of  yellow  post-office  paper,  eschewing 
pen  and  ink,  and  insisting  that  a  lead  pencil 
alone  could  keep  pace  with  the  swiftness  of 
her  thoughts. 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  37 

Emil  Ritterhaus,  the  poet  who  "dwells  by 
the  castled  Rhine,"  turns  out  lyrical  poems 
without  any  difficulty,  and  with  wonderful 
rapidity.  That  poem  of  his  which  was  read 
at  the  consecration  of  the  cathedral  at  Cologne 
was  composed  in  a  few  minutes,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  his  friend,  Ferdinand  Killer,  not  a  line 
being  changed  afterward.  When  he  is  in  the 
proper  mood,  many  a  speech  of  his  turns  invol- 
untarily into  an  improvisation.  Verses  he  pens 
in  person,  but  he  dictates  all  other  literary  work. 
When  at  work,  a  good  Havana  cigar,  a  glass  of 
first-class  wine,  or  a  cup  of  strong  coffee  are 
agreeable  to  him.  When  dictating,  he  is  in  the 
habit  of  lying  on  a  sofa  or  walking  slowly  up  and 
down  the  room.  The  poet  makes  it  a  rule  not 
to  write  unless  disposed  to. 

Gray  found  fault  with  Mason  for  fancying 
he  should  succeed  best  by  writing  hastily  in 
the  first  fervors  of  his  imaginations,  and,  there- 
fore, never  waiting  for  epithets  if  they  did  not 
occur  at  the  time  readily,  but  leaving  spaces  for 
them,  and  putting  them  in  afterward.  This 
enervated  his  poetry,  said  Gray,  and  he  says 
the  same  thing  of  the  same  method  by  whom- 
soever adopted,  for  nothing  is  done  so  well  as 
at  the  first  concoction.  One  of  Shelley's  bi- 
ographers came  upon  the  poet  in  a  pine  forest, 
writing  verses  on  a  guitar,  and,  picking  up  a 
fragment,  saw  a  "  frightful  scrawl,"  all  smear,  and 


38  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

smudge,  and  disorder  —  such  a  dashed-off  daub 
as  conceited  artists  are  apt  to  mistake  for 
genius.  Shelley  said:  "When  my  brain  gets 
heated  with  thought,  it  soon  boils,  and  throws 
off  images  and  words  faster  than  I  can  skim 
them  off.  In  the  morning,  when  cooled  down, 
out  of  that  rude  sketch,  as  you  justly  call  it,  I 
shall  attempt  a  drawing." 


IV. 
Influence   Upon   Writers  of  Time  and   Place. 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne  made  innumerable 
notes  of  every  fleeting,  quaint  fancy,  strange 
anecdote,  or  eccentric  person.  These  notes  he 
afterward  worked  into  his  stories.  Julian 
Hawthorne,  his  son,  states  in  the  Century 
Magazine :  "  The  new  husband  and  wife, 
Adam  and  Eve,  as  they  liked  to  call  themselves, 
were  almost  as  poor  in  money  as  their  proto- 
types, and  in  spite  of  their  orchard  and  their 
vegetable  garden,  a  good  deal  less  able  to  get 
on  without  occasional  remittances.  Accord- 
ingly, the  future  author  of  the  «  Scarlet  Letter ' 
was  compelled  to  alternate  his  hoeing  and  dig- 
ging, his  rambles  over  the  hills  and  his  paddling 
on  the  river,  with  periods  of  application  to 
pen  and  paper  in  his  study,  where  he  would  sit 
with  locked  doors,  clad  in  a  long  and  ancient 
flowered  dressing-gown,  upon  the  lining  of  the 
left-hand  skirt  of  which  he  was  in  the  habit  of 
wiping  his  pen.  His  wife  noticed  this  habit, 
and  said  nothing  about  it;  but  one  day,  on 
bringing  his  pen  to  the  accustomed  spot,  Haw- 
thorne found  stitched  on  there  a  pretty  pen- 
wiper, in  the  shape  of  a  butterfly  with  red  and 
black  wings,  and  this  butterfly  was  ever  after 
renewed  from  time  to  time,  as  necessity  re- 


40  METHODS    OF    AUTHORS. 

quired.  What  was  written  in  that  little  sunny- 
hued  study,  readers  know,  but  nobody,  not  even 
the  author's  wife,  ever  saw  him  in  the  act  of 
writing.  He  had  to  be  alone." 

Burns  usually  composed  while  walking  in  the 
open  air,  influenced,  perhaps,  Dr.  Currie  sug- 
gests, by  habits  formed  in  early  life.  Until  he 
was  completely  master  of  a  tune,  he  never 
could  write  words  for  it ;  so  his  way  was  to 
consider  the  poetic  sentiment  corresponding  to 
his  idea  of  the  musical  expression  ;  then  choose 
his  theme  ;  begin  one  stanza ;  when  that  was 
composed,  —  which  was  generally  the  most  diffi- 
cult part  of  the  task,  —  to  walk  out,  sit  down 
now  and  then,  look  out  for  objects  in  nature 
around  him,  such  as  harmonized  with  the  cogi- 
tations of  his  fancy,  humming  occasionally  the 
air,  with  the  verses  already  framed.  When  he 
felt  his  "  muse  beginning  to  jade,"  he  retired 
to  the  solitary  fireside  of  his  study,  and  there 
committed  his  thoughts  to  paper ;  swinging  at 
intervals  on  the  hind  leg  of  his  elbow-chair,  "by 
way,"  he  says,  "of  calling  forth  my  own  critical 
strictures  as  my  pen  goes  on."  Sometimes, 
and  more  than  once  too  often,  he  composed,  to 
use  his  own  expression,  "  by  the  leeside  of  a 
bowl  of  punch,  which  had  overset  every  mortal 
in  company,  except  the  hautbois  and  the  muse." 

Whether  in  town  or  country,  Landor  reflected 
and  composed  habitually  while  walking,  and, 


METHODS    OF    AUTHORS.  41 

therefore,  preferred  at  all  times  to  walk  alone. 
So  did  Buckle.  Wordsworth  was  accustomed 
to  compose  his  verse  in  his  solitary  walks, 
carry  it  in  his  memory,  and  get  wife  or 
daughter  to  write  it  down  on  his  return.  He 
used  to  compose  aloud  while  walking  in  the 
fields  and  woods.  Sometimes  he  would  use  a 
slate  pencil  and  the  smooth  side  of  a  rock  to  jot 
down  his  lines.  His  excursions  and  peculiar 
habits  gave  rise  to  some  anxious  beliefs  among 
the  ignorant  peasantry.  Even  his  sanity  was 
questioned.  The  peasantry  of  Rydal  thought 
him  "not  quite  hissel,"  because  he  always 
walked  alone,  and  was  met  at  odd  times  in  odd 
places.  Some  poets  have  been  in  the  habit  of 
humming  or  repeating  their  verses  aloud  as  they 
composed  them.  Southey,  for  instance,  boomed 
his  verses  so  as  to  be  mistaken  by  Wilson,  who 
was  a  keen  sportsman,  for  a  bittern  booming. 
If  this  is  true,  Southey's  voice  must  not  have 
been  very  harmonious,  for  the  bittern's  cry  is 
Shakespeare's  "  night-raven's  dismal  voice." 

Douglas  Jerrold  worked  at  a  desk  without  a 
speck  upon  it,  using  an  ink-stand  in  a  marble 
shell  'Clear  of  all  litter,  his  little  dog  at  his  feet. 
If  a  comedy  was  in  progress,  he  would  now  and 
then  walk  rapidly  up  and  down  the  room,  talk- 
ing wildly  to  himself.  "  If  it  be  Punch  copy, 
you  shall  hear  him  laugh  presently  as  he  hits 
upon  a  droll  bit."  And  then,  abruptly,  the  per* 
3 


42  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

would  be  put  down,  and  the  author  would  pass 
out  into  the  garden,  and  pluck  a  hawthorn  leaf, 
and  go,  nibbling  it  and  thinking,  down  the  side 
walks ;  then  "  in  again,  and  vehemently  to 
work,"  unrolling  the  thought  that  had  come  to 
him  along  little  blue  slips  of  paper,  in  letters 
smaller  than  the  type  in  which  they  were  pres- 
ently to  be  set. 

Dr.  Channing  had  the  same  habit  of  taking 
a  turn  in  the  garden,  during  which  he  was  a 
study  for  the  calm  concentration  of  his  look, 
and  the  deliberateness  of  his  step :  "  Calmer, 
brighter,  in  a  few  moments  he  is  seated  again 
at  his  table,  and  his  rapidly  flying  pen  shows 
how  full  is  the  current  of  his  thoughts." 

Jane  Taylor,  who  commenced  authorship  as 
a  very  little  girl  indeed,  and  who  used  at  that 
early  stage  to  compose  tales  and  dramas  while 
whipping  a  top,  — committing  them  to  paper  at 
the  close  of  that  exercise,  —  was  in  the  habit, 
her  brother  Isaac  tells  us,  of  rambling  for  half 
an  hour  after  breakfast,  "to  seek  that  pitch  of 
excitement  without  which  she  never  took  up 
the  pen." 

Of  Dickens  we  are  told  that  "  some  quaint 
little  bronze  figures  on  his  desk  were  as  much 
needed  for  the  easy  flow  of  his  writing  as  blue 
ink  or  quill  pens." 

Emanuel  Kant,  the  philosopher,  lived  the  life 
of  a  student;  in  fact,  his  life  may  be  taken  as 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  43 

the  type  of  that  of  a  scholar.  Kant,  like  Balzac, 
gave  a  daily  dinner-party ;  but  when  his  guests 
were  gone  he  took  a  walk  in  the  country  instead 
of  seeking  broken  slumbers  in  a  state  of  hun- 
ger. He  came  home  at  twilight,  and  read  from 
candle-light  till  bedtime  at  ten.  He  arose 
punctually  at  five,  and,  over  one  cup  of  tea  and 
part  of  a  pipe,  laid  out  his  plan  of  work  for  the 
day.  At  seven  he  lectured,  and  wrote  till  din- 
ner-time at  about  one.  The  regularity  of  his 
life  was  automatic.  He  regulated  his  diet  with 
the  care  of  a  physician.  During  the  blind- 
man's  holiday  between  his  walk  and  candle- 
light he  sat  down  to  think  in  twilight  fashion ; 
and  while  thus  engaged,  he  always  placed 
himself  so  that  his  eyes  might  fall  on  a  certain 
old  tower.  This  old  tower  became  so  necessary 
to  his  thoughts  that,  when  some  poplar  trees 
grew  up  and  hid  it  from  his  sight,  he  found 
himself  unable  to  think  at  all,  until,  at  his 
earnest  request,  the  trees  were  cropped  and  the 
tower  was  brought  into  sight  again. 

Kant's  old  tower  recalls  Buffon's  incapability 
of  thinking  to  good  purpose  except  in  full  dress, 
and  with  his  hair  in  such  elaborate  order  that, 
by  way  of  external  stimulus  to  his  brain,  he 
had  a  hairdresser  to  interrupt  his  work  twice, 
or,  when  very  busy,  thrice  a  day.  To  Aubrey  "-• 
we  owe  this  account  of  Prynne's  method  of 
study:  "He  wore  a  long  quilt  cap,  which 


44  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

came  two  or  three  inches  at  least  over  his  eyes, 
and  served  him  as  an  umbrella  to  defend  his 
eyes  from  the  light.  About  every  three  hours 
his  man  was  to  bring  him  a  roll  and  a  pot  of 
ale,  to  refocillate  his  wasted  spirits ;  so  he 
studied  and  drank  and  munched  some  bread; 
and  this  maintained  him  till  night,  and  then 
he  made  a  good  supper."  Refocillation  is  a 
favorite  resource  —  whatever  the  word  maybe 
—  with  authors  not  a  few.  Addison,  with  his 
bottle  of  wine  at  each  end  of  the  long  gallery  at 
Holland  House,  —  and  Schiller,  with  his  flask  of 
old  Rhenish  and  his  coffee  laced  with  old 
Cognac,  at  three  in  the  morning,  —  occur  to  the 
memory  at  once.  Shelley  attempted  to  ruin 
his  digestion  by  way  of  exciting  the  brain  by 
continually  munching  bread  while  composing. 

The  venerable  Leopold  von  Ranke,  one  of 
the  most  eminent  historians  of  the  age,  com- 
posed in  the  night  as  well  as  in  the  daytime, 
and  even  when  more  than  ninety  years  of  age 
sometimes  worked  till  midnight.  He  had  two 
secretaries.  He  was  a  late  riser,  as  most 
night-workers  are.  After  getting  up  late,  he 
worked  with  his  first  amarruensis  from  ten  in 
the  morning  until  three  in  the  afternoon. 
Thereupon,  if  the  weather  was  fine,  he  took  a 
walk  in  the  public  promenades,  always  accom- 
panied by  a  servant.  He  dined  at  five  P.  M., 
and  then  dictated  to  his  second  secretary  from 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  45 

six  in  the  evening  until,  occasionally,  one 
or  two  o'clock  in  the  morning.  He  neither 
took  stimulants  nor  smoked.  He  never  worked 
when  disinclined ;  in  fact,  the  disinclination  to 
write  was  foreign  to  his  nature.  He  always  felt 
like  writing. 

J.  T.  Trowbridge,  the  author  of  "  The  Vaga- 
bonds," always  prefers  daytime  to  night  for 
literary  work,  but  sometimes  can  compose  verse 
only  at  night.  He  always  sets  out  with  a  toler- 
ably distinct  outline  in  his  mind  —  rarely  on 
paper  —  of  what  he  intends  to  write.  But  the 
filling  in  he  leaves  to  the  suggestions  of  thought 
in  the  hour  ot  composition,  and  often  gets  on 
to  currents  which  carry  him  into  unexpected 
by-ways.  He  seldom  begins  a  story  that  he 
would  not  like  to  make  twice  as  long  as  his 
contract  allows,  so  many  incidents  and  combin- 
ations suggest  themselves  as  he  goes  on.  He 
never  works  under  the  influence  of  stimulants. 
Verse  he  never  composes  with  a  pen  in  his 
hand.  It  is  seldom  that  he  can  compose  any 
that  is  in  the  least  satisfactory  to  himself  ;  when 
he  can,  he  walks  in  pleasant  places,  if  the 
weather  is  favorable,  or  louhges  on  rocks  or 
banks,  or  in  the  woods ;  or  he  lies  on  a  sofa  in 
a  dimly-lighted  room  at  night ;  or  in  bed,  where 
he  elaborates  his  lines,  which  he  retains  in  his 
memory,  to  be  written  down  at  the  first  con- 
venient season.  He  rarely  puts  pen  to  paper 


46  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

at  night.  When  fairly  launched  in  a  prose 
composition,  he  writes  from  two  to  four  hours 
a  day,  seldom  five.  The  mere  act  of  writing  is 
a  sa^  drudgery  to  him,  and  he  often  has  to 
force  himself  to  begin.  Then  he  usually  forgets 
the  drudgery  in  the  interest  excited  by  the  de- 
velopment of  his  thoughts.  But  he  never  thinks 
it  wise  to  continue  writing  when  he  cannot  do 
so  with  pleasure  and  ease.  In  his  younger 
days  Jhe  used  to  think  he  must  do  a  certain 
amount  of  work  each  day,  whether  he  felt  like 
it  or  not.  But  now  he  is  of  the  opinion  that  it 
might  have  been  better  for  his  readers  and 
himself  if  he  had  been  governed  more  by  his 
moods. 

Robert  Hamerling,  the  Austrian  novelist, 
loved  to  compose  in  bed  in  the  early  hours  of 
morning.  He  was  an  expert  stenographer,  and, 
therefore,  made  use  of  stenography  when  com- 
mitting his  thoughts  to  paper,  thereby  saving 
much  time,  which,  of  course,  facilitated  the 
mental  labor.  For  this  reason,  he  could  also  cor- 
rect and  improve  the  manuscript,  as  well  as 
make  additions  to  the  same,  with  the  least 
waste  of  time.  He  did  not  require  refresh- 
ments at  work,  and  wrote  with  remarkable 
facility.  The  duration  of  the  time  which  he 
spent  at  the  writing-desk  depended  upon  the 
state  of  his  health  and  the  temper  of  his  mind. 

Frederick  Friedrich,  well  known  in  Germany 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  47 

as  a  novelist,  prefers  the  evening  for  literary 
work,  although  he  conceives  the  plots  of  his 
stories  in  the  course  of  the  day.  He  asserts 
that  the  nerves  are  more  stimulated  and  that 
the  imagination  is  more  lively  in  the  evening. 
His  novels  are  sent  to  the  printer  as  they  were 
written;  he  hardly  ever  makes  corrections. 
While  at  work  Friedrich  fills  the  air  with  cigar 
smoke  and  drinks  several  glasses  of  Rhine-wine. 
He  must  be  alone,  and  the  writing-table  must  be 
in  the  customary  order ;  any  new  arrangement 
of  the  things  on  the  table  makes  the  author 
feel  uncomfortable,  so  much  so  at  times  that  it 
prevents  him  from  writing.  He  is  a  facile" 
writer,  and  composes  with  great  speed.  He 
never  writes  unless  inclined  to,  and  is  governed 
by  moods.  Therefore,  a  week  or  two  some- 
times passes  before  he  pens  a  line,  being  in 
perfect  health,  but  lacking  the  inclination  to 
perform  intellectual  work.  He  never  devotes 
more  than  three  hours  a  day  to  literary  labor, 
generally  less  than  that,  but  spends  almost  all 
day  in  thinking  over  the  plots  of  his  novels. 
He  never  begins  a  story  until  it  is  elaborated  in 
his  mind,  and  never  makes  notes.  When  once 
engaged  in  the  composition  of  a  novel,  he  keeps 
at  it  day  after  day  until  it  is  finished.  While 
writing  his  own  he  is  unable  to  read  the  novels 
of  anybody  else. 
Celia  Thaxter  evolves  her  graceful  verses  in 


48  METHODS   OF  AUTHORS. 

the  daytime.  She  sometimes  makes  a  skeleton 
of  her  work  first,  not  always;  and  very  often 
forces  herself  to  work  in  spite  of  disinclination. 

The  Austrian  poet,  Rudolph  Baumbach,  is 
partial  to  daylight,  and  never  writes  at  night. 
He  always  makes  an  outline  of  his  work  before 
beginning  in  good  earnest.  When  meditating 
on  his  poems  he  walks  up  and  down  the  room, 
but  gives  the  open  air  the  preference.  He 
likes  much  light;  when  the  sun  does  not  shine 
his  work  does  not  progress  favorably.  In  the 
evening  he  lights  up  his  room  by  a  large  num- 
ber of  candles.  Literary  labor  is  pleasure  to 
him  when  the  weather  is  fine,  but  it  is  extremely 
hard  when  clouds  shut  out  the  sunlight.  The 
poet  has  no  fixed  rule  as  regards  working- 
hours  ;  sometimes  he  exerts  himself  a  great 
deal  for  weeks,  and  then  again  he  does  not 
write  at  all  for  a  long  time. 

Otto  von  Leixner,  German  historian,  poet, 
novelist,  and  essayist,  composes  prose,  which 
requires  logical  thinking,  in  the  daytime,  but 
does  poetical  work,  which  taxes  principally  the 
imagination,  in  the  evening.  He  makes  a  skel- 
eton of  all  critical  and  scientific  compositions, 
indeed  of  all  essays,  and  then  writes  out  the 
"  copy  "  for  the  press,  seldom  making  altera- 
tions. But  he  files  away  at  poems  from  time 
to  time  until  he  thinks  them  fit  for  publication. 
He  is  a  smoker,  but  does  not  smoke  when  at 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  49 

work.  Whether  promenading  the  shady  walks 
of  a  wood  or  perambulating  the  dusty  streets  of 
the  city,  Leixner  constantly  thinks  about  the 
works  he  has  in  hand.  Literary  work  has  no 
difficulties  for  this  author ;  he  -penned  one  of 
his  poems,  "  The  Vision,"  consisting  of  five 
hundred  and  eighty  lines,  in  three  hours  and  a 
half  and  sent  it  to  the  printer  as  it  was  origi- 
nally written ;  and  he  composed  the  novel 
"Adja,"  thirty-nine  and  one-half  octavo  pages 
in  print,  in  nine  hours.  But  he  often  meditates 
over  the  topics  which  go  to  make  up  his  novels, 
etc.,  for  years  and  years  until  he  has  considered 
them  from  every  standpoint.  After  composi- 
tion he  often  locks  up  his  manuscript  in  his 
desk  for  half  a  year,  until  it  is  almost  forgotten, 
when  he  takes  it  from  its  place  of  concealment 
and  examines  it  carefully  to  detect  possible 
errors.  If  at  such  an  examination  the  work 
does  not  prove  satisfactory  to  him,  he  throws  it 
into  the  stove.  Being  the  editor  of  a  journal  of 
fiction,  he  is  often  compelled  to  work  whether 
he  wants  to  or  not.  From  1869  to  1870  he 
worked  sixteen  hours  a  day;  from  1877  till 
1882  about  thirteen  hours,  even  Sundays;  at 
present  he  spends  from  ten  to  eleven  hours 
every  day  at  the  writing-table,  unless  kept  from 
work  by  visitors.  He  retains  his  health  by 
taking  a  daily  walk,  rain  or  shine,  to  which  he 
devotes  two  hours.  Leixner  lives  a  very  tem- 


50  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

perate  life  and  hardly  ever  imbibes  stimulating 
drinks. 

The  greatest  of  all  Southern  poets,  Paul 
Hamilton  Hayne,  had  no  particular  time  for 
composition,  writing  as  often  in  the  daytime  as 
at  night.  Whether  he  made  an  outline  or  skel- 
eton of  his  work  first,  depended  upon  the 
nature  of  the  poem.  When  the  piece  was  elab- 
orate, he  outlined  it,  and  subsequently  filled  up, 
much  as  a  painter  would  do.  The^poet  used  to 
smoke  a  great  deal  in  composing,  but  was 
obliged  to  abandon  tobacco,  having  had  at- 
tacks of  hemorrhage.  He  used  tea  instead  of 
coffee  sometimes,  but  took  little  even  of  that. 
Wine  he  did  not  use.  Hayne  composed  best 
when  walking,  or  riding  upon  horseback,  and  as 
he  was  seldom  without  a  book  in  hand,  wrote  a 
great  deal  on  the  fly-leaves  of  any  volume  he 
chanced  to  be  consulting.  He  frequently  had 
to  force  himself  to  work  when  he  did  not  have 
an  inclination  to  do  so. 


V. 
Writing  Under  Difficulties. 

It  is  an  exceptional  mind  that  enables  an 
author  to  write  at  his  ease  amid  interruptions 
and  distractions,  lets  and  hindrances,  of  a 
domestic  kind.  He'loise  gave  this  singular 
reason  for  her  constant  refusal  to  become 
Abelard's  wife  —  that  no  mind  devoted  to  the 
meditations  of  philosophy  could  endure  the 
cries  of  children,  the  chatter  of  nurses,  and  the 
babble  and  coming  and  going  in  and  out  of 
serving  men  and  women.  Of  Abelard  himself, 
however,  we  are  told  that  he  had  a  rare  power 
of  abstracting  himself  from  all  outward  con- 
cerns ;  that  no  one  knew  better  how  to  be 
alone,  though  surrounded  by  others  ;  and  that, 
in  fact,  his  senses  took  no  note  of  outward 
things.  When  Cumberland  was  composing 
any  work,  he  never  shut  himself  up  in  his  study, 
but  always  wrote  in  the  room  where  his  family 
sat,  and  did  not  feel  in  the  least  disturbed  by 
the  noise  of  his  children  at  play  beside  him. 
The  literary  habits  of  Lord  Hailes,  as  Mr. 
Robert  Chambers  remarks,  were  hardly  such 
as  would  have  been  expected  from  his  extreme" 
nicety  of  diction  :  it  was  in  no  secluded  sanc- 
tum, or  "  den,"  that  he  composed,  but  by  the 


52  METHODS   OF  AUTHORS. 

"parlour  fireside,"  with  wife  and  bairns  within 
very  present  sight  and  sound. 

Cowper  describes  himself  at  Weston  (1791) 
as  working  in  a  study  exposed  to  all  manner  of 
inroads,  and  in  no  way  disconcerted  by  the 
coming  and  going  of  servants,  or  other  inci- 
dental and  inevitable  impediments.  A  year  or 
two  later  he  writes  from  the  same  spot, 
"  amidst  a  chaos  of  interruptions,"  including 
Hayley  spouting  Greek,  and  Mrs.  Unwin  talk- 
ing sometimes  to  them,  sometimes  to  herself. 
Francis  Horner  relates  a  visit  he  and  a  friend 
paid  to  Jeremy  Bentham  at  Ford  Abbey,  one 
spacious  room  in  which,  a  tapestried  chamber, 
the  utilitarian  philosopher  had  utilized  for  what 
he  called  his  "  scribbling  shop  "  —  two  or  three 
tables  being  set  out,  covered  with  white  nap- 
kins, on  which  were  placed  music  desks  with 
manuscripts;  and  here  the  visitors  were  al- 
lowed to  be  "  present  at  the  mysteries,  for  he 
went  on  as  if  we  had  not  been  with  him." 

The  fourth  of  Dr.  Chalmers'  Astronomical 
Discourses  was  penned  in  a  small  pocket-book, 
in  a  strange  apartment,  where  he  was  liable 
every  moment  to  interruption  ;  for  it  was  at  the 
manse  of  Balmerino,  disappointed  in  not  find- 
ing the  minister  at  home,  and  having  a  couple 
of  hours  to  spare,  — and  in  a  drawing-room  at 
the  manse  of  Kilmany,  with  all  the  excitement 
of  meeting  for  the  first  time,  after  a  year's 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  53 

absence,  many  of  his  former  friends  and  parish- 
ioners, —  that  he  penned  paragraph  after  para- 
graph of  a  composition  which,  as  his  son-in-law 
and  biographer,  Dr.  Hanna,  says,  bears  upon  it 
so  much  the  aspect  of  high  and  continuous 
elaboration. 

His  friend,  —  and  sometimes  associate  in  pas- 
toral work,  — Edward  Irving,  on  the  other  hand, 
could  not  write  a  sermon  if  any  one  was  in  the 
room  with  him.  Chalmers  appears  to  have 
been  specially  endowed  with  that  faculty  of 
concentrated  attention  which  is  commonly  re- 
garded as  one  of  the  surest  marks  of  the 
highest  intellect,  and  which  Alison  so  much 
admired  in  Wellington — as,  for  instance,  on 
the  day  when  he  lay  at  San  Christoval,  in  front 
of  the  French  army,  hourly  expecting  a  battle, 
and  wrote  out,  in  the  field,  a  long  and  minute 
memorial  on  the  establishment  of  a  bank  at 
Lisbon  on  the  principles  of  the  English  ones. 

We  read  of  Ercilla,  whose  epic  poem,  the 
Arancana,  has  admirers  out  of  Spain,  that  he 
wrote  it  amidst  the  incessant  toils  and  dangers 
of  a  campaign  against  barbarians,  without  shel- 
ter, and  with  nothing  to  write  on  but  small 
scraps  of  waste  paper,  and  often  only  leather ; 
struggling  at  once  against  enemies  and  sur- 
rounding circumstances. 

Louis  de  Cormantaigne,  the  distinguished 
French  engineer,  composed  his  treatise  on  for- 


54  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

tification  from  notes  written  in  the  trenches 
and  on  the  breaches,  even  under  the  fire  of  the 
enemy. 

Delambre'  was  in  Paris  when  it  was  taken  by 
the  allies  in  1814,  and  is  said  to  have  worked 
at  his  problems  with  perfect  tranquility  from 
eight  in  the  morning  till  midnight,  in  the  con- 
tinued hearing  of  the  cannonade.  "  Such  self- 
possession  for  study  under  that  tremendous  at- 
tack, and  such  absence  of  interest  in  the  result 
of  the  great  struggle,  to  say  nothing  of  indiffer- 
ence to  personal  danger,"  is  what  one  of  his 
biographers  confesses  himself  unable  to  under- 
stand. Small  sympathy  would  the  philosopher 
have  had  with  the  temperament  of  such  a  man, 
say,  as  Thomas  Hood,  who  always  wrote  most 
at  night,  when  all  was  quiet  and  the  children 
were  asleep.  "  I  have  a  room  to  myself," 
exclaims  Hood,  triumphantly,  in  a  letter 
describing  a  change  of  lodgings,  "which  will 
be  worth  £20  a  year  to  me, — for  a  little  dis- 
concerts my  nerves."  Mrs.  Hood  brought  up 
the  children,  we  learn  from  one  of  them,  in  a 
sort  of  Spartan  style  of  education,  on  her  hus- 
band's account,  teaching  them  the  virtues  of 
silence  and  low  voices. 

Washington  Irving  was  of  a  less  morbid 
temperament,  and  his  genial  nature  could  put  up 
with  obstacles  and  obstructions  neither  few  nor 
small ;  but  even  in  his  Diary  we  meet  with 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  55 

such  entries  as  this  at  Bordeaux,  in  1825: 
"  Harassed  by  noises  in  the  house,  till  I  had  to 
go  out  in  despair,  and  write  in  Mr.  Guestier's 
library."  It  was  upon  the  Essay  on  American 
Scenery  that  he  was  then  engaged. 

Unlike  Maturin,  who  used  to  compose  with  a 
wafer  pasted  on  his  forehead,  which  was  the 
signal  that  if  any  of  his  family  entered  the  sanc- 
tum they  must  not  speak  to  him,  Scott  allowed 
his  children  ( like  their  mute  playmates,  Camp 
and  the  greyhounds  )  free  access  to  his  study, 
never  considered  their  talk  as  any  disturbance, 
let  them  come  and  go  as  pleased  their  fancy, 
was  always  ready  to  answer  their  questions,  and 
when  they,  unconscious  how  he  was  engaged 
(  writes  the  husband  of  one  of  them  ),  entreated 
him  to  lay  down  his  pen  and  tell  them  a  story, 
he  would  take  them  on  his  knee,  repeat  a 
ballad  or  a  legend,  kiss  them,  and  set  them 
down  again  to  their  marbles  or  ninepins,  and 
resume  his  labor  as  if  refreshed  by  the  inter- 
ruption. There  was  nothing  in  that  manly, 
sound,  robust  constitution  akin  to  the  morbid 
irritability  of  Philip  in  the  poem: — 

"  When  Philip  wrote,  he  never  seemed  so  well  — 
Was  startled  even  if  a  cinder  fell, 
And  quickly  worried." 

Biographers  of  Mistress  Aphra  Behn  make 
it  noteworthy  of  that  too  facile  penwoman  that 
she  could  write  away  in  company  and  main- 


56  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

tain  the  while  her  share  in  the  talk.  Madame 
Roland  managed  to  get  through  her  memoirs 
with  a  semblance  at  least  of  unbroken  serenity, 
though  so  often  interrupted  in  the  composition 
of  them  by  the  cries  of  victims  in  the  adjoining 
cells,  whom  the  executioners  were  dragging 
thence  to  the  guillotine. 

Madame  de  Stae'l,  "even  in  her  most  inspired 
compositions,"  according  to  Madame  Necker  de 
Saussure,  '.'had  pleasure  in  being  interrupted 
by  those  she  loved."  She  was  not,  observed 
Lord  Lytton,  of  the  tribe  of  those  who  labor  to 
be  inspired;  who  darken  the  room  and  lock  the 
door,  and  entreat  you  not  to  disturb  them. 
Rather,  she  came  of  the  same  stock  as  George 
Sand's  Olympe,  who  "  se  mit  a  dcrire  sur  un 
coin  de  la  table,  entre  le  bouteille  de  biere  et  le 
sucrier,  au  bruit  des  verres  et  de  la  conversa- 
tion aussi  tranquillement  que  si  elle  eut  6t£ 
dans  la  solitude.  Cette  puissance  de  concen 
tration  e'tait  une  de  ses  facultds  les  plus  re- 
marquables." 

That  Lord  Castlereagh  was  able  to  write  his 
despatches  at  the  common  table  in  the  com- 
mon room  of  a  country  house  is  not  unjustly 
among  the  admiring  reminiscences  of  a  Septua- 
genarian (Countess  Brownlow):  "  Once  only  we 
found  the  talking  and  laughter  were  too  much  for 
his  power  of  abstraction,  and  then  he  went  off 
into  his  own  room,  saying  next  morning  at 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  57 

breakfast,  '  You  fairly  beat  me  last  night ;  I 
was  writing  what  I  may  call  the  metaphysics 
of  politics.'  " 

Celebrated  in  the  "Noctes  Ambrosianae"  is 
the  Glasgow  poet,  Sandy  Rogers,  not  less  for  his 
lyrics,  one  at  least  of  which  is  pronounced  by 
Christopher  North  to  be  "  equal  to  anything  of 
the  kind  in  Burns,"  than  for  the  fact  that  his 
verses  —  some  of  them,  too,  of  a  serious  char- 
acter—  were  thought  out  amidst  the  bustle  and 
turmoil  of  factory  labor,  the  din  of  the  clank- 
ing steam-engine,  and  the  deafening  rattle  of 
machinery,  while  the  work  of  committing  them 
to  paper  was  generally  performed  amidst  the 
squalling  and  clamor  of  children  around  the 
hearth,  now  in  the  noise  of  fractious  conten- 
tion, and  anon  exuberant  with  fun  and  frolic. 

Tannahill,  too,  composed  while  plying  the 
shuttle,  —  humming  over  the  airs  to  which  he 
meant  to  adapt  new  words ;  and,  as  the  words 
occurred  to  him,  jotting  them  down  at  a  rude 
desk  which  he  had  attached  to  his  loom,  and 
which  he  could  use  without  rising  from  his 
seat.  But  no  more  noteworthy  example  of  the 
pursuit  of  authorship  under  difficulties  —  the 
difficulties  of  a  narrow  home  —  res  augusta 
domi  —  is  probably  on  record,  in  its  simple, 
homely  way,  than  that  of  Jean  Paul,  as  Boring 
pictures  him,  sitting  in  a  corner  of  the  room  in 
which  the  household  work  was  being  carried 


58  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

on  —  he  at  his  plain  writing-desk,  with  few  or  no 
books  about  him,  but  merely  with  a  drawer  or 
two  containing  excerpts  and  manuscripts ;  the 
jingle  and  clatter  that  arose  from  the  simulta- 
neous operations  at  stove  and  dresser  no  more 
seeming  to  disturb  him  than  did  the  cooing  of 
the  pigeons  which  fluttered  to  and  fro  in  the 
chamber,  at  their  own  sweet  will. 

Dr.  Johnson  delved  at  his  dictionary  in  a 
poor  lodging-house  in  London,  with  a  cat  pur- 
ring near,  and  orange  peel  and  tea  at  hand. 

Moliere  tested  the  comic  power  of  his  plays 
by  reading  them  to  an  old  servant. 

Dr.  William  E.  Channing  used  to  perambu- 
late the  room  while  composing  ;  his  printers  re- 
port that  he  made  many  revisions  of  the  proof 
of  his  writings,  so  that  before  the  words  met 
the  eyes  of  the  public  on  the  printed  page  the 
sentences  were  finished  with  the  most  elabo- 
rate minuteness. 

„  Bloomfield,  the  poet,  relates  of  himself  that 
nearly  one-half  of  his  poem,  "The  Farmer's 
Boy,"  was  composed  without  writing  a  word  of 
it,  while  he  was  at  work,  with  other  shoemakers, 
in  a  garret. 

Sharon  Turner,  author  of  the  valuable  "  His- 
tory of  the  Anglo-Saxons,"  who  received  a 
pension  of  $1,500  from  the  British  government 
for  his  services  to  literature,  wrote  the  third 
volume  of  "  The  Sacred  History  of  the  World  " 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  59 

upon  paper  that  did  not  cost  him  a  farthing. 
The  copy  consisted  of  torn  and  angular  frag- 
ments of  letters  and  notes,  of  covers  of  periodi- 
cals and  shreds  of  curling  papers,  unctuous  with 
pomatum  and  bear's  grease. 

Mrs.  Lizzie  W.  Champney  writes  absolutely 
without  method.  Her  stories,  she  admits,  have 
been  penned  in  her  nursery,  with  her  baby  in 
her  lap,  and  a  sturdy  little  boy  standing  on  the 
rails  of  her  chair  and  strangling  her  with  his 
loving  little  arms.  She  works  whenever  and 
wherever  she  can  find  the  opportunity  ;  but  the 
children  are  always  put  first. 

George  Ticknor,  the  Bostonian,  found  Wil- 
liam Hazlitt  living  in  the  very  house  in  which 
Milton  dictated  "  Paradise  Lost,"  and  occupy- 
ing the  room  where  the  poet  kept  the  organ  on 
which  he  loved  to  play.  It  was  an  enormous 
room,  but  furnished  only  with  a  table,  three 
chairs,  and  an  old  picture.  The  most  interest- 
ing thing  that  the  visitor  from  Boston  saw, 
except  the  occupant  himself,  was  the  white- 
washed walls.  Hazlitt  had  used  them  as  a 
commonplace  book,  writing  on  them  in  pencil 
scraps  of  brilliant  thoughts,  half-lines  of  poetry, 
and  references.  Hazlitt  usually  wrote  with  the 
breakfast  things  on  the  table,  and  there  they 
remained  until  he  went  out,  at  four  or  five 
o'clock,  to  dinner.  His  pen  was  more  to  him 
than  a  mechanical  instrument ;  it  was  also  the 


60  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

intellectual  wand  by  which  he  called  up 
thoughts  and  opinions,  and  clothed  them  in 
appropriate  language. 

It  was  in  a  bookseller's  back-shop,  M. 
Nisard  tells  us,  on  a  desk  to  which  was 
fastened  a  great  Newfoundland  dog  (who,  by- 
the-bye,  one  day  banged  through  the  window  of 
an  upper  room,  desk  and  all,  to  join  his  master 
in  the  street  below ),  that  Armand  Carrel,  one 
moment  absorbed  in  English  memoirs  and 
papers,  another  moment  in  caressing  his  four- 
footed  friend,  conceived  and  wrote  his  "  History 
of  the  Counter  Revolution  in  England."  Mr. 
Walker,  in  this  as  in  other  respects  "The 
Original,"  adopted  a  mode  of  composition 
which,  says  he,  "  I  apprehend  to  be  very  dif- 
ferent from  what  could  be  supposed,  and  from 
the  usual  mode.  I  write  in  a  bedroom  at  a 
hotel,  sitting  upon  a  cane  chair,  in  the  same 
dress  I  go  out  in,  and  with  no  books  to  refer  to 
but  the  New  Testament,  Shakespeare,  and  a 
pocket  dictionary."  Now  and  then,  when  much 
pressed  for  time,  and  without  premeditation, 
and  with  his  eye  on  the  clock,  he  wrote  some 
of  his  shorter  essays  at  the  Athenaeum  Club,  at 
the  same  table  where  other  members  were 
writing  notes  and  letters. 


VI. 
Aids  to  Inspiration. 

Washington  Irving's  literary  work  was  gener- 
ally performed  before  noon.  '  He  said  the  hap- 
piest hours  of  his  life  were  those  passed  in  the 
composition  of-  his  different  books.  He  wrote 
most  of  "The  Stout  Gentleman"  while  mounted 
on  a  stile,  or  seated  on  a  stone,  in  his  excursions 
with  Leslie,  the  painter,  'round  about  Stratford- 
on-Avon,  —  the  latter  making  sketches  in  the 
mean  time.  The  artist  says  that  his  companion 
wrote  with  the  greatest  rapidity,  often  laughing 
to  himself,  and  from  time  to  time  reading  the 
manuscript  aloud. 

Dr.  Darwin  wrote  most  of  his  works  on  scraps 
of  paper  with  a  pencil  as  he  travelled.  But  how 
did  he  travel  ?  In  a  worn  and  battered  "  sulky," 
which  had  a  skylight  at  the  top,  with  an  awn- 
ing to  be  drawn  over  it  at  pleasure ;  the  front 
of  the  carriage  being  occupied  by  a  receptacle 
for  writing-paper  and  pencils,  a  knife,  fork,  and 
spoon ;  while  on  one  side  was  a  pile  of  books 
reaching  from  the  floor  nearly  to  the  front  win- 
dow of  the  carriage;  on  the  other,  by  Mrs. 
Schimmel-penninck's  account,  a  hamper  con- 
taining fruit  and  sweetmeats,  cream  and  sugar, 
—  to  which  the  big,  burly,  keen-eyed,  stammer- 


62  METHODS    OF    AUTHORS. 

ing  doctor  paid  attentions  as  devoted  as  he  ever 
bestowed  on  the  pile  of  books. 

Alexander  Kisfaludy,  foremost  Hungarian 
poet  of  his  time,  wrote  most  of  his  "  Himfy  " 
on  horseback  or  in  solitary  walks;  a  poem,  or 
collection  of  poems,  that  made  an  unprece- 
dented sensation  in  Hungary,  where,  by  the  same 
token,  Sandor  Kisfaludy  of  that  ilk  became  at 
once  the  Great  Unknown. 

Cujas,  the  object  of  Chateaubriand's  special 
admiration,  used  to  write  lying  flat  on  his 
breast,  with  his  books  spread  about  him. 

Sir  Henry  Wotton  is  our  authority  for  record- 
ing of  Father  Paul  Sarpi  that,  when  engaged  in 
writing,  his  manner  was  to  sit  fenced  with  a  castle 
of  paper  about  his  chair,  and  overhead  ;  "  for  he 
was  of  our  Lord  of  St.  Albans'  opinion,  that '  all  air 
is  predatory'  and  especially  hurtful  when  the 
spirits  are  most  employed." 

Rousseau  tells  us  that  he  never  could  compose 
pen  in  hand,  seated  at  a  table,  and  duly  supplied 
with  paper  and  ink  ;  it  was  in  his  promenades,  — 
the  promenades  d'un  solitaire, —  amid  rocks  and 
woods,  and  at  night,  in  bed,  when  he  was  lying 
awake,  that  he  wrote  in  his  brain ;  to  use  his 
own  phrase,  "  J^ecris  dans  mon  cerveau"  Some 
of  his  periods  he  turned  and  re-turned  half 
a  dozen  nights  in  bed  before  he  deemed 
them  fit  to  be  put  down  on  paper.  On  moving 
to  the  Hermitage  of  Montmorency,  he  adopted 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  63 

the  same  plan  as  in  Paris,  —  devoting,  as  always, 
his  mornings  to  the  pen-work  de  la  copie,  and 
his  afternoons  to  la  promenade,  blank  paper, 
book,  and  pencil  in  hand ;  for,  says  he,  "  having 
never  been  able  to  write  and  think  at  my  ease 
except  in  the  open  air,  sule  dio,  I  was  not 
tempted  to  change  my  method,  and  I  reckoned 
not  a  little  on  the  forest  of  Montmorency  becom- 
ing —  for  it  was  close  to  my  door  —  my  cabinet  de 
travail"  In  another  place  he  affirms  his  sheer 
incapacity  for  meditation  by  day,  except  in  the 
act  of  walking ;  the  moment  he  stopped  walk- 
ing, he  stopped  thinking,  too,  for  his  head 
worked  with,  and  only  with,  his  feet.  "  De 
jour  je  ne  puts  mediter  qii'en  mar  chant ; 
sitot  que  je  m'arrete  je  ne  pense  plus,  et 
ma  tete  ne  va  qu'avec  mes  pieds"  Salvitur 
ambulando,  whatever  intellectual  problem  is 
solved  by  Jean  Jaques.  His  strength  was  not 
to  sit  still.  His  ReVeries,  by  the  way,  were 
written  on  scraps  of  paper  of  all  sorts  and  sizes, 
on  covers  of  old  letters,  and  on  playing  cards  — 
all  covered  with  a  small,  neat  handwriting.  He 
was  as  economical  of  material  as  was  "  Paper- 
sparing  Pope  "  himself. 

In  some  points  Chateaubriand  was  intellectu- 
ally, or,  rather,  sentimentally,  related  to  Rous- 
seau, but  not  in  his  way  of  using  ink  and  paper. 

Chateaubriand  sat  at  a  table  well  supplied 
with  methodically  arranged  heaps  of  paper  cut 


64  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

in  sizes  ;  and  as  soon  as  a  page  was  blotted  over 
in  the  biggest  of  his  big  handwriting,  —  accord- 
ing to  M.  de  Marcullus,  with  almost  as  many 
drops  of  ink  as  words,  —  he  tossed  it  aside, 
without  using  paunce  or  blotting-paper,  to  blot 
and  be  blotted  by  its  accumulating  fellows.  Now 
and  then  he  got  up  from  this  work,  to  look  out 
of  the  window,  or  to  pace  the  room,  as  if  in 
quest  of  new  ideas.  The  chapter  finished,  he 
collected  all  the  scattered  leaves,  and  revised 
them  in  due  form  —  more  frequently  adding  to 
than  curtailing  their  fair  proportions,  and  pay- 
ing very  special  attention  to  the  punctuation  of 
his  sentences. 

Lessing's  inherent  nobility  of  intellect  is  said  to 
have  been  typified  in  his  manner  of  study.  When 
in  the  act  of  composition  he  walked  up  and  down 
till  his  eye  was  caught  by  the  title  of  some  book. 
He  would  open  it,  his  brother  tells  us,  and, 
if  struck  by  some  sentence  which  pleased  him,  he 
would  copy  it  out ;  in  so  doing,  a  train  of 
thought  would  be  suggested,  and  this  would 
be  immediately  followed  up  —  provided  his 
mood  was  just  right. 

The  early  morning  would  lure  Jean  Paul 
Richter  to  take  out  his  ink-flask  and  write 
as  he  walked  in  the  fragrant  air.  Such  com- 
positions as  his  "  Dream  of  a  Madman  "  he 
would  set  about  by  first  seating  himself  at  the 
harpsichord,  and  "  fantasying  "  for  a  while  on 


METHODS    OF    AUTHORS.  65 

it,  till  the  ideas,  or  "imaginings,"  came  —  which 
presently  they  would  do  with  a  rush. 

Tradition,  as  we  get  it  through  the  historian 
of  the  Clapham  Sect,  informs  us  that  Wilber- 
force  wrote  his  "  Practical  View "  under  the 
roof  of  two  of  his  best  friends,  in  so  fragmentary 
and  irregular  a  manner,  that  one  of  them,  when 
at  length  the  volume  lay  complete  on  the  table, 
professed,  on  the  strength  of  this  experience,  to 
have  become  a  convert  to  the  opinion  that  a 
fortuitous  concourse  of  atoms  might,  by  some 
felicitous  chance,  combine  themselves  into  the 
most  perfect  of  forms  —  a  moss-rose  or  a  bird 
of  paradise. 

Coleridge  told  Hazlitt  that  he  liked  to  com- 
pose in  walking  over  uneven  ground,  or  break- 
ing through  the  straggling  branches  of  a  copse- 
wood. 

Sheridan  composed  at  night,  with  a  profusion 
of  lights  around  him,  and  a  bottle  of  wine  by 
his  side.  He  used  to  say :  "  If  a  thought  is 
slow  to  come,  a  glass  of  good  wine  encourages 
it ;  and  when  it  does  come,  a  glass  of  good  wine 
rewards  it." 

Lamartine,  in  the  days  of  his  prosperity,  com- 
posed in  a  studio  with  tropical  plants,  birds,  and 
every  luxury  around  him  to  cheer  the  senses. 

Berkeley  composed  his  "Minute  Philosopher  " 
under  the  shade  of  a  rock  on  Newport  Beach. 

Burns  wove  a  stanza  as  he  ploughed  the  field. 


66  METHODS    OF    AUTHORS. 

Charlotte  Bronte  had  to  choose  her  favorable 
days  for  writing,  —  sometimes  weeks,  or  even 
months,  elapsing  before  she  felt  that  she  had 
anything  to  add  to  that  portion  of  her  story 
which  was  already  written;  then  some  morning 
she  would  wake  up,  and  the  progress  of  her  tale 
lay  clear  and  bright  before  her,  says  Mrs.  Gas- 
kell,  in  distinct  vision;  and  she  set  to  work  to 
write  out  what  was  more  present  to  her  mind  at 
such  times  than  her  actual  life  was.  She  wrote 
on  little  scraps  of  paper,  in  a  minute  hand,  hold- 
ing each  against  a  piece  of  board,  such  as  is  used 
in  binding  books,  for  a  desk,  —  a  plan  found  to 
be  necessary  for  one  so  short-sighted,  —  and  this 
sometimes  as  she  sat  near  the  fire  by  twilight. 

While  writing  "  Jane  Eyre  "  she  became  in- 
tensely concerned  in  the  fortunes  of  her  hero- 
ine, whose  smallness  and  plainness  corresponded 
with  her  own.  When  she  had  brought  the 
little  Jane  to  Thornfield,  her  enthusiasm  had 
grown  so  great  that  she  could  not  stop.  She 
went  on  incessantly  for  weeks.  At  the  end  of 
this  time  she  had  made  the  minute  woman  con- 
quer temptation,  and  in  the  dawn  of  the  summer 
morning  leave  Thornfield.  "  After  Jane  left 
Thornfield,  the  rest  of  the  book,"  says  Miss 
Martineau,  "  was  written  with  less  vehemence 
and  with  more  anxious  care"  —  the  world  adds, 
"  with  less  vigor  and  interest." 

"  Ouida  "  (  Louise  de  la  Rame'e )  writes  in  the 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  67 

early  morning.  She  gets  up  at  five  o'clock,  and, 
before  she  begins,  works  herself  up  into  a  sort 
of  literary  trance. 

Professor  Wilson,  the  Christopher  North  of 
Blackw^od's  Magazine,  jotted  down  in  a  large 
ledger  "  skeletons,"  from  which,  when  he  de- 
sired an  article,  he  would  select  one  and  clothe 
it  with  muscle  and  nerve.  He  was  a  very  rapid 
writer  and  composer,  but  worked  only  when  he 
liked  and  how  he  liked.  He  maintained  that 
any  man  in  good  health  might  write  an  entire 
number  of  Blackwood's.  He  described  himself 
as  writing  "  by  screeds  "  —  the  fit  coming  on 
about  ten  in  the  morning,  which  he  encouraged 
by  a  caulker  (  "  a  mere  nut-shell,  which  my  dear 
friend  the  English  opium-eater  would  toss  off  in 
laudanum  " ) ;  and  as  soon  as  he  felt  that  there 
was  no  danger  of  a  relapse,  that  his  demon 
would  be  with  him  the  whole  day,  he  ordered 
dinner  at  nine,  shut  himself  up  within  triple 
doors,  and  set  manfully  to  work.  "  No  desk  ! 
An  inclined  plane  —  except  in  bed  —  is  my  ab- 
horrence. All  glorious  articles  must  be  written 
on  a  dead  flat."  His  friend,  the  Ettrick  Shep- 
herd, used  a  slate. 

Dr.  Georg  Ebers,  professor  at  the  University 
of  Leipzig,  Saxony,  who  is  known  all  over  the 
world  as  the  author  of  novels  treating  of  ancient 
Egyptian  life,  and  as  the  writer  of  learned 
treatises  on  the  country  of  the  Khedives,  pre- 


68  METHODS    OF    AUTHORS. 

fers  to  work  in  the  late  evening  hours  until  mid- 
night when  composing  poetry,  but  favors  day- 
light for  labor  on  scientific  topics.  He  makes  a 
rough  draft  of  his  work,  has  this  copied  by  an 
amanuensis,  and  then  polishes  and  files  it  until 
it  is  satisfactory  to  him,  that  is,  as  perfect  as  he 
possibly  can  make  it.  He  finds  that  tobacco 
stimulates  him  to  work,  and,  therefore,  he  uses  it 
when  engaged  in  literary  production.  When  he 
writes  poetry,  he  is  in  the  habit  of  sitting  in  an 
arm-chair,  supporting  a  lap-board  on  his  knee, 
which  holds  the  paper ;  in  this  position  he  pens 
his  lyrics.  He  imagines  that  he  is  more  at  lib- 
erty in  this  posture  than  when  behind  a  writing 
desk.  Ordinarily  he  writes  with  great  ease,  but 
sometimes  the  composition  of  a  stirring  chapter 
so  mercilessly  excites  him  that  great  beads  of 
sweat  appear  upon  his  forehead,  and  he  is  com- 
pelled to  lay  down  his  pen,  unable  to  write 
another  line.  He  never  writes  unless  he  is  in  a 
suitable  frame  of  mind,  except  it  be  on  business 
matters.  Sometimes,  when  laboring  on  topics 
of  science,  he  works  from  ten  to  twelve  hours 
at  a  stretch  ;  he  never  spends  more  than  three 
or  four  hours  in  succession  on  poetry. 

Charles  Reade's  habit  of  working  was  unique. 
When  he  had  decided  on  a  new  work  he  plotted 
out  the  scheme,  situations,  facts,  and  characters 
on  three  large  sheets  of  pasteboard.  Then  he 
set  to  work,  using  very  large  foolscap  to  write 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  69 

on,  working  rapidly,  but  with  frequent  references 
to  his  storehouse  of  facts,  in  the  scrap-books, 
which  were  ready  at  his  hand.  The  genial 
novelist  was  a  great  reader  of  newspapers. 
Anything  that  struck  him  as  interesting,  or  any 
fact  which  tended  to  support  one  of  his  humani- 
tarian theories,  was  cut  out,  pasted  in  a  large 
folio  scrap-book,  and  carefully  indexed.  Facts 
of  any  sort  were  his  hobby.  From  the  scrap- 
books  thus  collected  with  great  care  he  used 
to  elaborate  the  "  questions  "  treated  of  in  his 
novels. 

Like  Charles  Reade,  Miss  Anna  Katherine 
Green  is  a  believer  in  scrap-books,  and  culls 
from  newspapers  accounts  of  strange  events. 
Out  of  such  material  she  weaves  her  stories  of 
crime  and  its  detection. 

Emile  Zola,  the  graphic  author  of  realistic 
fiction,  carefully  makes  studies  from  life  for  his 
sensational  works.  He  writes  rapidly,  smoking 
cigarettes  trie  while.  He  is  an  inveterate 
smoker,  and,  if  there  is  anything  he  likes  bet- 
ter than  tobacco,  it  is  his  beautiful  country- 
house  near  Paris,  where  he  receives  daily  a 
large  circle  of  admiring  friends. 

Edward  P.  Roe,  who,  if  we  may  rate  success  by 
the  wide  circulation  of  an  author's  books,  was 
our  most  successful  novelist,  preferred  the  day- 
time for  literary  work,  and  rarely  accomplished 
much  in  the  evening  beyond  writing  letters, 


70  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

reading,  etc.  When  pressed  with  work  he  put 
in  long  hours  at  night.  In  the  preface  to 
"  Without  a  Home,"  Rev.  Mr.  Roe  presents  some 
extremely  interesting  matter  in  regard  to  the 
causes  which  led  to  his  authorship,  and  the 
methods  of  work  by  which  he  turned  out  so 
many  well-constructed  stories  in  so  short  a  time. 
"  Ten  years  ago,"  he  says,  "  I  had  never  written 
a  line  of  a  story,  and  had  scarcely  entertained 
the  thought  of  constructing  one.  The  burning 
of  Chicago  impressed  me  powerfully,  and,  obedi- 
ent to  an  impulse,  I  spent  several  days  among 
its  smoking  ruins.  As  a  result,  my  first  novel, 
'  Barriers  Burned  Away,'  gradually  took  posses- 
sion of  my  mind.  I  did  not  manufacture  the 
story  at  all,  for  it  grew  as  naturally  as  do  the 
plants  —  weeds,  some  may  suggest  —  on  my 
farm.  In  the  intervals  of  a  busy  and  practical 
life,  and  also  when  I  ought  to  have  been  sleep- 
ing, my  imagination,  unspurred  and  almost  un- 
directed, spun  the  warp  and  woof  of  the  tale  and 
wove  them  together.  ...  I  merely  let  the 
characters  do  as  they  pleased,  and  work  out 
their  own  destiny.  I  had  no  preparation  for  the 
work  beyond  a  careful  study  of  the  topography 
of  Chicago  and  the  incidents  of  the  fire.  For 
nearly  a  year  my  chief  recreation  was  to  dwell 
apart  among  the  shadows  created  by  my  fancy, 
and  I  wrote  when  and  where  I  could  —  on 
steamboats  and  railroad  cars,  as  well  as  in  my 


METHODS  OF  AUTHORS.  71 

study.  .  .  .  When  the  book  appeared  I 
suppose  I  looked  upon  it  much  as  a  young 
father  looks  upon  his  first  child.  His  interest 
in  it  is  intense,  but  he  knows  well  that  its  future 
is  very  doubtful."  Mr.  Roe  always  wrote  from  a 
feeling  that  he  had  something  to  say  ;  and  never 
"manufactured"  a  novel  in  his  life.  While 
writing  he  was  absorbed  in  his  work  ;  and  made 
elaborate  studies  for  his  novels.  "  I  have 
visited,"  said  he,  in  reference  to  "  Without  a 
Home,"  "  scores  of  typical  tenements.  I  have 
sat  day  after  day  on  the  bench  with  the  police 
judges,  and  have  visited  the  station-houses  re- 
peatedly. There  are  few  large  retail  shops  that 
I  have  not  entered  many  times,  and  I  have  con- 
versed with  both  employers  and  employees." 

Mr.  Roe  did  not  make  "outlines"  or  "skele- 
tons "  to  any  great  extent,  and  when  he  did  so,  he 
did  not  follow  them  closely.  Indeed,  he  often 
reversed  his  plan,  satisfied  that  following  an  ar- 
bitrary outline  makes  both  story  and  charac- 
ters wooden.  He  held  that  the  characters 
should  control  the  author,  not  he  them.  He 
usually  received  the  suggestion  of  a  story  un- 
expectedly, and  let  it  take  form  in  his  mind  and 
grow  naturally,  like  a  plant,  for  months,  more 
often  for  years,  before  he  began  to  write.  He 
averred  that  after  his  characters  were  introduced 
he  became  merely  the  reporter  of  what  they  do, 
say,  and  think.  He  imagined  that  it  was  this  spon- 


72  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

taneity  which,  chiefly,  made  his  books  popular, 
and  said  that  to  reach  intelligent  people  through 
fiction,  the  life  portrayed  must  seem  to  them 
real  and  natural,  and  that  this  can  scarcely  be 
true  of  his  characters  if  the  author  is  forever 
imposing  his  arbitrary  will  upon  them.  Mr. 
Roe  wrote  in  bound  blank-books,  using  but  one 
side  of  a  sheet.  This  allowed  ample  space  for 
changes  and  corrections,  and  the  manuscript 
was  kept  in  place  and  order.  The  novelist 
used  tea,  and  especially  coffee,  to  some  extent 
as  a  stimulant,  and  smoked  very  mild  cigars. 
But  he  rarely  took  coffee  at  his  dinner,  at  six 
P.  M.,  as  it  tended  to  insomnia.  The  author  of 
"  Barriers  Burned  Away  "  worked  three  or  four 
hours  before  and  two  or  three  hours  after  lunch. 
On  this  point,  however,  he  varied.  When 
wrought  up  and  interested  in  a  scene,  he 
usually  completed  it.  In  the  after  part  of  the 
day,  when  he  began  to  feel  weary,  he  stopped, 
and,  if  hard  pressed,  began  work  again  in  the 
evening.  Once,  many  years  ago,  he  wrote 
twenty-four  hours  at  a  stretch,  with  the  aid 
of  coffee.  He  did  not  force  himself  to  work 
against  inclination  beyond  a  certain  point.  At 
the  same  time  he  fought  against  a  tendency  to 
"  moods  and  tenses." 

The  German  lyric  poet,  Martin  Greif,  writes 
only  in  the  daytime,  because  he  can  conceive 
poetry  only  when  walking  in  the  woods,  mead- 


METHODS   OF  AUTHORS.  73 

ows,  and  lanes  that  form  the  environs  of  the 
Bavarian  capital  —  Munich.  During  his  excur- 
sions into  the  surrounding  country,  he  notes 
down  his  thoughts,  which  he  elaborates  when  he 
reaches  his  quiet  study.  He  is  not  a  ready 
versifier,  and  is  compelled  to  alter  a  poem  re- 
peatedly before  it  receives  his  approbation. 
At  work  in  the  afternoon,  he  loves  to  smoke 
moderately;  but  he  never  uses  stimulants. 
Generally  work  is  hard  to  him,  but  sometimes  — 
that  is,  rarely  —  he  writes  with  unusual  rapidity. 
As  a  professional  writer,  he  must  sometimes 
force  himself  to  work  and  must  mount  the  Peg- 
asus in  spite  of  disinclination,  as  when,  for 
instance,  a  product  of  his  pen  has  to  be  deliv- 
ered on  a  certain  date. 

Emile  Mario  Vacano  composed  his  writings  at 
all  times  that  gave  him  the  impulse  for  doing 
so:  at  daybreak  or  in  the  night.  With  him 
it  was  the  "  whereabouts,"  not  the  hour,  that 
made  the  essence.  There  was  a  mill  belonging 
to  a  good  friend  of  his,  where  he  found  his  best 
inspirations  amidst  all  the  hubbub  of  horses, 
peasants,  poultry,  cows,  pigeons,  and  country 
life.  And  he  asserted  that  the  name  of  his  friend, 
Harry  Salzer,  of  Stattersdorf,  near  St.  Poelten, 
Lower  Austria,  ought  to  be  joined  to  his.  He 
said  that  his  friend  merited  a  great  share  of  his 
"glories  "  by  his  hospitality  as  well  as  on  ac- 
count of  his  bright  ideas.  Vacano  never  made 

5 


74  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

a  plan  in  advance,  but  penned  his  novels,  stories, 
essays,  etc.,  as  one  writes  a  letter, — prima  vista, 
—  never  perusing  again  what  he  had  written, 
be  it  good  or  bad.  When  writing  he  imbibed  a 
good  deal  of  beer,  and  was  in  the  habit  of  using 
snuff.  He  did  not  regard  writing  as  work. 
For  him  it  was  like  a  chat  in  pen  and  ink  with 
friends.  As  for  an  inclination  to  work  ;  as  for 
a  feeling  that  he  had  something  to  say,  and  must 
say  it,  come  what  will,  —  there  was  nothing  of  the 
sort  in  him.  He  said  he  hated  romances,  tales, 
and  all  the  like,  and  wrote  only  to  gain  his 
"pain  quotidien"  and  that  he  detested  the  hum- 
bug with  all  his  heart  and  despised  the  mob  that 
would  read  it.  He  declared  that  if  he  were  a  mil- 
lionaire or  simply  wealthy,  "  he'd  never  take  a 
pen  in  hand  for  bullying  a  stupid  public  with 
his  nonsense." 

Emile  Richebourg  writes  his  fascinating 
novels  in  a  plain  style,  but,  despite  the  absence 
of  flowery  language,  is  capable  of  expressing 
much  feeling.  The  novel  or  drama  is  com- 
pleted in  his  head  before  he  writes  a  line.  As 
the  plot  develops,  the  dialogues  and  events  sug- 
gest themselves.  When  he  has  got  to  work  he 
keeps  right  on,  seldom  re-reading  what  he  has 
composed.  He  makes  an  outline  of  his  book 
before  beginning.  He  is  in  the  habit  of  noting 
down  on  a  piece  of  paper  the  names,  ages,  lodg- 
ings, etc.,  of  the  persons  who  are  pictured  in  his 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  75 

novels,  also  the  title  of  each  chapter.  For- 
merly he  worked  from  eight  to  twelve  hours  a 
day,  but  never  at  night.  Now  he  labors  only 
five  or  six  hours  at  the  most,  and  always  in  the 
morning.  Richebourg  is  an  early  riser,  and 
goes  to  bed  early  in  the  evening.  He  gets  up 
at  six  in  the  morning.  At  eight  o'clock  he 
drinks  a  bowl  of  warm  milk  without  sugar, 
which  constitutes  his  sole  nourishment  until 
dinner  at  noon.  With  him  this  is  the  principal 
meal  of  the  day ;  and  during  its  progress,  ac- 
cording to  his  own  confession,  he  finds  a  bottle 
of  wine  very  agreeable.  He  eats  but  little  in 
the  evening.  When  at  work  he  smokes  contin- 
uously;  always  a  pipe.  He  works  with  diffi- 
culty, yet  with  pleasure,  and  identifies  him- 
self, that  is,  when  composing,  with  the  person- 
ages whom  he  describes.  During  the  afternoon 
he  promenades  in  his  garden,  attends  to  his  roses 
and  other  flowers,  and  trims  the  shrubs. 

The  study  of  Maurice  Jokai,  the  great  Hunga- 
rian romancer,  is  a  perfect  museum  of  valuable 
souvenirs  and  rare  antiquities.  Books,  journals, 
and  pamphlets  cover  tables,  chairs,  and  walls ; 
busts  and  statuettes,  which  stand  about  here  and 
there,  give  the  room  the  appearance  of  pictu- 
resque disorder.  The  portrait  of  his  wife,  in 
various  sizes,  adorns  the  space  on  the  walls 
not  taken  up  by  the  books.  The  top  of  his 
writing-table  is  full  of  bric-a-brac,  which  leaves 


76  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

only  sufficient  room  for  the  quarto  paper  upon 
which  he  pens  his  entertaining  romances.  He 
writes  with  little,  fine  pens,  of  so  good  a  work- 
manship that  he  is  enabled  to  write  a  four-vol- 
ume novel  with  one  pen.  He  always  makes  use 
of  violet  ink,  to  which  he  is  so  accustomed  that 
he  becomes  perplexed  when  compelled,  outside 
of  his  house,  to  resort  to  ink  of  another  color. 
He  claims  that  thoughts  are  not  forthcoming 
when  he  writes  with  any  other  ink.  When 
violet  ink  is  not  within  reach,  he  prefers  to  write 
with  a  lead  pencil,  but  he  does  so  only  when 
composing  short  stories  and  essays.  For  the 
composition  of  his  romances,  which  generally 
fill  from  one  to  five  volumes  when  printed,  vio- 
let ink  is  indispensable.  He  rarely  corrects  his 
manuscripts,  and  they  generally  go  to  the  printer 
as  they  were  originally  composed ;  they  are 
written  in  a  plain,  legible  hand ;  and  are  what 
one  of  the  typographic  fraternity  would  call 
"beautiful  copy."  One  of  the  corners  of  his 
writing-desk  holds  a  miniature  library,  consisting 
of  neatly-bound  note-books,  which  contain  the 
outlines  of  his  novels  as  they  originated  in  his 
mind.  When  he  has  once  begun  a  romance,  he 
keeps  right  on  till  he  puts  down  the  final  period  ; 
that  is,  he  writes  day  by  day  till  the  novel  is 
completed.  Jokai  says  :  "  It  often  happens  that 
I  surround  my  hero  with  dangers,  that  enemies 
arise  on  all  sides,  and  escape  seems  impossible. 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  77 

Then  I  often  say  to  myself :  '  I  wonder  how  the 
fellow  will  get  out  of  the  scrape  ? ' ' 

In  his  home,  at  Hartford,  Conn.,  Mark 
Twain's  workshop  is  in  his  billiard-room,  at  the 
top  of  the  house,  and  when  he  grows  tired  of 
pushing  the  pen  he  rises  and  eases  his  muscles 
by  doing  some  scientific  strokes  with  the  cue. 
He  is  a  hard  worker,  and,  like  Trollope,  believes 
that  there  is  nothing  like  a  piece  of  shoemaker's 
wax  on  the  seat  of  one's  chair  to  encourage 
good  literary  work.  Ordinarily  he  has  a  fixed 
amount  of  writing  for  each  day's  duty.  He 
rewrites  many  of  his  chapters,  and  some  of 
them  have  been  scratched  out  and  interlined 
again  and  again. 

Robert  Waldmueller,  a  leading  German  novel- 
ist, who  writes  under  the  pseudonym  of  "  Charles 
Ecluard  Duboc,"  works  mostly  from  eight,  nine, 
or  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  until  two  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon,  but  never  writes  at  night. 
Generally  he  does  not  plan  his  work  beforehand. 
When  at  work  he  must  be  unmolested.  In 
composition,  he  loves  to  change  off,  now  pro- 
ducing poetry,  now  plays  and  essays,  as  his 
mood  may  direct.  He~"writes  with  great  ease 
and  swiftness ;  and  the  many  books  which 
he  has  composed  testify  that  he  cannot  justly 
be  accused  of  indolence.  He  attributes  his 
facility  of  expression  to  the  discrimination 
which  he  has  always  exercised  in  the  choice 


78  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

of  books.  In  early  boyhood  he  was  already 
disgusted  with  Florian's  sickly  "  Guillaume 
Tell,"  while  Washington  Irving's  "Sketch- 
book "  delighted  him  very  much ;  he  was  also 
deeply  impressed  by  the  perusal  of  Homer's 
immortal  epics.  He  adopted  authorship  when 
twenty-five  years  of  age,  and  has  followed  it 
successfully  ever  since.  Until  then  he  was 
especially  fond  of  composing  music  and  of 
drawing  and  painting,  but  he  lacked  the  time 
to  perfect  himself  in  these  accomplishments. 
Yet,  even  to-day,  he  practices  both  arts  occa- 
sionally as  a  pastime  and  for  recreation. 

The  evening  finds  Dr.  Johann  Fastenrath, 
the  poet,  who  writes  as  elegant  Spanish  as  he 
does  German,  and  who  is  as  well-known  in 
Madrid  as  he  is  in  Cologne  on  the  Rhine,  at 
the  writing-table.  He  never  makes  a  skeleton 
beforehand  of  essays  in  his  mother-tongue ; 
but  for  compositions  in  French  or  Spanish  he 
invariably  makes  an  outline.  One  peculiarity 
which  he  has  is  to  scribble  his  poems  upon 
little  scraps  of  paper.  When  writing  prose  in 
Spanish  he  divides  the  manuscript-paper  in 
halves,  so  as  to  be  able  to  make  additions  and 
to  lengthen  any  particular  sentence,  for  in  the 
Spanish  language  artfully  long  periods  are 
considered  especially  beautiful.  He  does  not 
regard  literary  composition  as  work,  and  con- 
ceives poems  faster  than  he  can  write  them 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  79 

down.  When  he  is  at  work  absolute  quiet  must 
reign  about  him;  he  cannot  bear  noise  of  any 
kind.  During  the  winter  he  works  day  for  day 
at  home,  but  in  the  summer  he  tolerates  con- 
finement no  longer,  and  whenever  he  composes 
at  this  time  it  is  always  in  the  open  air.  From 
autumn  till  spring  he  writes  from  six  to  seven 
hours  a  day. 

Adolf  Streckfusz,  a  German  novelist,  prefers 
to  write  in  the  afternoon  and  evening,  and  attains 
the  greatest  speed  in  composition  at  night.  He 
makes  no  plan  beforehand,  but  revises  his  manu- 
script at  least  twice  after  completion.  He  often 
allows  the  cigar  which  he  smokes  when  at  work 
to  go  out,  but  lights  it  mechanically  from  time  to 
time,  so  that  the  floor  of  his  study  is  sometimes 
covered  with  dozens  of  thrown-away  lucifers  after 
working  hours.  When  writing,  his  cigar  is  as 
indispensable  to  him  as  his  pen.  He  can  do 
without  neither.  Formerly  he  could  work  with 
extraordinary  facility,  but  now,  with  increasing 
age,  a  few  hours'  work  at  times  tires  him  out  so 
much  that  he  must,  of  necessity,  take  a  rest. 
As  with  many  other  authors,  a  sense  of  duty  often 
impels  him  to  work;  but  almost  always,  after  a 
beginning  is  made,  he  composes  with  pleasure. 
The  time  which  he  devotes  daily  to  literary 
work  varies.  He  never  works  more  than  eight 
hours,  but  rarely  less  than  three  or  four  hours  a 
day. 


80  METHODS    OF    AUTHORS. 

The  author  of  "  The  Lady  or  the  Tiger"  and 
many  other  short  stories  —  Frank  R.  Stockton 
—  always  works  in  the  morning,  and  not  at  any 
other  time.  In  writing  a  short  story,  such  as  is 
published  in  a  single  number  of  a  magazine,  he 
usually  composes  the  whole  story,  description, 
incident,  and  even  the  dialogue,  before  writing  a 
word  of  it.  In  this  way  the  story  is  finished  in 
his  mind  before  it  is  begun  on  paper.  While 
engaged  in  other  writing  he  has  carried  in  his 
memory  for  several  months  as  many  as  three 
stories,  each  ready  to  be~put  upon  paper  as  soon 
as  he  should  have  an  opportunity.  When  he  is 
writing  a  longer  story,  he  makes  in  his  mind  a 
general  outline  of  the  plot,  etc. ;  and  then  he 
composes  three  or  four  chapters  before  he  be- 
gins to  write  ;  when  these  are  finished,  he  stops 
writing  until  some  more  are  thought  out :  he 
never  composes  at  the  point  of  the  pen.  He 
does  not  write  any  of  his  manuscripts  himself ; 
they  are  all  written  from  his  dictation.  Stock- 
ton is  very  fond  of  working  in  the  summer  in 
the  open  air,  and  a  great  many  of  his  stories 
have  been  dictated  while  lying  in  a  hammock. 
He  usually  works  from  about  ten  in  the  morn- 
ing until  one  P.  M.,  but  he  spends  no  time  at 
the  writing-desk,  except  when  he  writes  letters, 
which  he  never  does  in  his  working  hours.  Some 
years  ago  he  used  to  work  very  differently, 
being  occupied  all  day  with  editorial  work,  and 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  8l 

in  the  evening  with  literary  work ;  but  his  health 
would  not  stand  this,  and  he,  therefore,  adopted 
his  present  methods.  He  works  regularly  every 
day,  whether  he  feels  like  it  or  not ;  but  when 
he  has  set  his  mind  on  a  subject,  it  is  generally 
not  long  before  he  does  feel  like  it. 

Dr.  Leopold  Chevalier  de  Sacher-Masoch 
generally  used  to  work  at  night  in  former  years, 
but  now  vvrites  by  daylight  only,  preferably  in 
the  morning.  He  is  the  author  of  a  great  many 
graphic  stones  about  Galicia,  and  lives  at  Leip- 
sic,  surrounded  by  a  coterie  of  admiring  friends. 
He  makes  an  accurate  outline  ;  then  pens  his 
novel  word  for  word  till  it  is  finished,  where- 
upon it  is  handed  to  the  printer  as  it  is,  not  a 
word  being  altered,  added,  or  erased.  He  is 
not  in  the  habit  of  using  stimulating  drinks  or 
tobacco  when  at  work,  and  leads  altogether  a 
temperate  life.  He  has  an  innate  predilection 
for  fur,  and  declares  that  fur  worn  by  a  beautiful 
woman  exercises  a  magic  spell  over  him.  For- 
merly he  had  a  pretty  black  cat  that  used  to  lie 
on  his  knees  or  sleep  on  his  writing-desk  when 
he  was  at  work.  Now,  when  he  writes,  a  red 
velvet  lady's-jacket,  with  a  fur  lining  of  sable 
and  borders  of  the  same  material,  lies  near  at 
hand  upon  a  divan.  Although  he  is  ordinarily 
good-natured,  his  anger  is  easily  provoked  by 
any  disturbance  during  working  hours.  Com- 
position is  mere  play  to  him  after  he  has  begun, 


82  METHODS    OF    AUTHORS. 

but  the  first  lines  of  a  new  work  always  are 
penned  with  difficulty.  When  he  writes  with- 
out an  inclination,  he  is,  as  a  rule,  dissatisfied 
with  the  result.  Generally  he  spends  from 
three  to  four  hours  at  the  writing-desk  and 
devotes  the  rest  of  the  day  to  recreation. 

Dr.  Julius  Stinde,  who  is  responsible  for  that 
excellent  German  satire,  "  Die  Familie  Buch- 
holz,"  never  works  by  lamplight,  if  he  can  pos- 
sibly avoid  it.  He  writes  on  large  sheets,  of 
quarto  size,  and  never  makes  an  outline ;  the 
compositor  gets  the  manuscript  as  it  was  writ- 
ten, with  a  few,  but  not  many,  alterations. 
Whatever  is  not  satisfactory  to  the  author  is 
thrown  into  the  waste-paper  basket,which,  in  con- 
sequence, is  pretty  large.  While  at  work  he  takes 
a  pinch  of  snuff  from  time  to  time,  which,  he 
asserts,  has  a  beneficial  action  on  the  eyes  that 
are  taxed  by  incessant  study  and  composition. 
When  he  treats  of  scientific  topics,  a  few  glasses 
of  Rhine  wine  tend  to  induce  the  proper  mood  ; 
he  finds  the  "  Johannisgarten,"  a  wine  grown  at 
Musbach  in  the  palatinate  of  the  Rhine,  es- 
pecially valuable  for  this  purpose.  He  com- 
poses humorous  work  most  easily  after  a  very 
simple  breakfast,  consisting  of  tea  and  bread. 
He  is  in  the  habit  of  often  changing  the  kinds 
of  paper,  pens,  pen-holders,  ink,  and  even  ink- 
stands, which  he  uses ;  and  loves  to  see  fresh 
flowers  on  his  writing-desk.  He  writes  with 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  83 

greater  facility  in  fine,  sunny  weather  than  on 
dark,  gloomy  days.  That  is  the  reason  why  he 
prefers,  on  cloudy  days,  to  write  in  the  evening. 
He  declares  that  he  would  rather  stop  writing 
for  days  and  weeks  than  to  compose  without 
inclination,  and  he  tells  us  that  whenever  he  at- 
tempts to  work  "sans  inclination"  as  the 
French  say,  the  result  is  unsatisfactory,  and  the 
effort  strains  both  mind  and  body.  He  sel- 
dom spends  more  than  eight  hours  a  day  at  the 
writing-table. 

To  the  many  with  whom  it  is  customary  to 
do  literary  work  in  the  daytime  must  be  added 
Johannes  Nordmann,  one  of  Vienna's  most  able 
novelists  and  newspaper  men.  He  writes  more 
during  the  winter  than  in  the  summer  time, 
most  of  which  he  spends  in  travelling.  He 
never  recopies  prose.  For  poems,  however, 
he  first  makes  an  outline,  and  then  files  the 
verse  till  it  receives  his  approbation.  While 
driving  the  "quill,"  he  smokes  cigars.  He 
writes  with  remarkable  speed  and  ease  after  the 
subject  in  hand  has  ripened  in  his  thoughts. 
He  often  forces  himself  to  do  newspaper  work, 
when  he  would  fain  do  anything  else  ;  and  is 
totally  unable  to  compose  fiction  or  poetry  when 
not  disposed  to. 

Moncure  D.  Conway  burns  daylight,  never 
the  midnight  oil,  and  rarely  the  evening  oil. 
Generally  he  works  with  his  pen  eight  hours  a 


84  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

day,  tries  to  take  two  walks,  and  in  the  evening 
to  get  some  amusement, —  billiards  or  the  thea- 
tre, of  which  he  is  very  fond.  He  smokes  as 
he  begins  work,  but  does  not  keep  it  up,  and 
uses  no  other  stimulant  at  work.  He  loves 
work,  and  never  has  had  to  force  himself  to 
labor.  He  generally  makes  some  outline  of  what 
he  means  to  write,  but  often  leaves  it,  finding 
his  thoughts  developed  by  stating  them.  Con- 
way  has  to  be  alone  when  writing,  but  does  not 
care  for  noise  outside  of  his  study.  He  is  a  slow 
writer,  and  is  always  waiting  on  a  nursery  of 
slowly-maturing  subjects. 

Kate  Field,  the  well-known  editor  and  lec- 
turer, prefers  the  daytime  for  literary  work, 
for  the  reason,  she  says,  that  the  brain  is  far 
clearer  in  the  morning  than  at  any  other  time. 
This  refers,  of  course,  to  a  normal  brain,  inde- 
pendent of  stimulants.  She  thinks  that,  under 
pressure,  night  work  in  journalism  is  often 
more  brilliant  than  any  other  ;  but  that  it  is 
exceptional.  She  makes  no  outline  in  advance  ; 
and  never  uses  stimulants,  hot  water  excepted. 
She  has  no  particular  habit  when  at  work, 
except  the  habit  of  sticking  to  it;  and  has.no 
specified  hours  for  work.  She  spends  no  time 
at  a  desk,  as  she  writes  in  her  lap,  a  habit 
which  was  also  a  peculiarity  of  Mrs.  Browning. 
Miss  Field  maintains  that  it  is  far  easier  for 
her,  and  prevents  round  shoulders,  and  is  also 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  85 

better  for  the  lungs.  She  has  forced  herself  to 
write  at  times,  and  does  not  believe  in  wafting 
for  ideas  "  to  turn  up." 

E.  Vely,  one  of  the  best  of  the  female  novel- 
ists of  Germany,  however,  believes  in  inspira- 
tions, and  does  not  take  a  pen  in  hand  unless 
disposed  to  write.  Four  hours  in  the  forenoon 
are  spent  in  composition,  while  the  afternoon 
and  evening  are  given  up  to  pastime,  exercise, 
and  study.  While  at  work  she  hates  to  be  in- 
terrupted, and  insists  upon  absolute  stillness 
about  her.  She  always  sends  her  original 
manuscript  to  the  printer. 

And  now  we  come  to  one  who  recently  joined 
the  great  majority,  one  who,  although  he  has 
gone  the  way  of  all  mortals,  still  lives,  whose 
name  is  not  only  found  on  the  long  list  of  the 
illustrious  dead,  but  is  also  graven  in  golden 
letters  on  the  record  of  the  age :  Dr.  Alfred 
Meissner.  It  was  his  wont  to  do  the  imagi- 
native part  of  his  work  in  the  stillness  of  the 
night,  either  in  an  easy  chair  —  smoking  a  cigar 
—  or  in  bed,  in  which  he  used  to  pass  several 
hours  sleepless  almost  every  day.  He  used  to 
sit  down  to  write  in  the  morning  and  quit  at 
noon.  Early  in  his  literary  career  this  distin- 
guished Austrian  novelist  discovered  that  com- 
position in  the  night-time,  that  is,  the  mechanical 
part  of  it,  would  not  agree  with  him,  that  it  was 
too  great  a  strain  on  his  nervous  system,  and 


86  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

so  wisely  concluded  to  write  only  by  daylight. 
He  was  unable  to  comprehend  how  anybody 
could  write  a  novel  —  a  very  intricate  work  — 
without  making  alterations  and  erasures  subse- 
quently in  the  original  manuscripts.  It  ap- 
peared to  him  as  if  an  artist  would  not  make 
a  sketch  of  his  projected  picture  first,  but 
would  begin  immediately  to  paint  in  oil  and 
make  no  changes  afterward.  He  cited  the 
example  of  Raphael  and  Titian,  who,  although 
they  were  talented  artists,  made  numerous 
sketches  before  they  began  a  painting.  Dr. 
Meissner  first  made  a  detailed  outline  of  his 
work,  which  he  elaborated  with  great  care. 
While  copying  this  second  manuscript  he  was 
enabled  to  make  a  great  many  alterations,  and 
to  strike  out  everything  that  was  unsuitable. 
Practically  every  production  of  his  pen  was 
written  three  times. 

Sometimes  Meissner  would  work  with  great 
ease,  sometimes  with  difficulty.  The  composi- 
tion of  chapters  that  were  full  of  stirring  inci- 
dents, violent  passions,  or  perilous  situations 
used  to  excite  him  intensely,  and  progressed  by 
degrees  ;  whereas  other  chapters  were  written 
with  great  facility  and  swiftness.  He  wrote 
only  when  he  was  compelled  to  by  his  crea- 
tive faculty,  that  urged  him  to  set  down  what 
he  had  to  say.  He  was  a  very  diligent  author, 
and  left  many  books  to  keep  his  memory  green 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  87 

and  constantly  endear  him  to  the  hearts  of  the 
people. 

Dr.  A.  Glaser,  the  German  novelist,  dictates 
all  his  stories  to  a  private  secretary,  a  luxury 
which  few  Teutonic  authors  can  afford.  Ordi- 
narily he  writes  in  the  daytime,  but  when  deeply 
interested  in  some  new  work  he  keeps  right  on 
till  late  at  night.  Music,  especially  classic 
music,  exerts  a  great  influence  on  the  products 
of  his  pen.  When  his  work  progresses  slowly, 
a  complication  is  not  easily  solved,  or  a  charac- 
ter becomes  somewhat  indistinct,  music,  that  is, 
oratorios  and  symphonies,  invariably  sets  all 
matters  right  and  dispels  all  difficulties.  He 
never  writes  with  greater  facility  or  rapidity 
than  when  he  has  heard  the  music  of  Handel, 
Bach,  or  Beethoven  just  before  sitting  down  to 
write. 

What  little  literary  work  John  Burroughs 
does  is  entirely  contingent  upon  his  health. 
If  he  is  not  feeling  absolutely  well,  with  a  good 
appetite  for  his  food,  a  good  appetite  for  sleep, 
for  the  open  air,  for  life  generally,  there  is  no 
literary  work  for  him.  If  his  sleep  has  been 
broken  or  insufficient,  the  day  that  follows  is 
lost  to  his  pen.  He  leads  a  sane  and  simple 
life :  goes  to  bed  at  nine  o'clock  and  gets  up 
at  five  in  summer  and  at  six  in  winter ;  spends 
half  of  each  day  in  the  open  air  ;  avoids  tea  and 
coffee,  tobacco,  and  all  stimulating  drinks ;  ad- 


88  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

heres  mainly  to  a  fruit  and  vegetable  diet,  and 
always  aims  to  have  something  to  do  which  he 
can  do  with  zest.  He  is  fond  of  the  mild  excite- 
ment of  a  congenial  talk,  of  a  conversation  with 
friends,  of  a  walk  in  the  fields  or  woods,  of  a 
row  on  the  river,  of  the  reading  of  a  good  book. 
During  working-hours  he  likes  to  regale  him- 
self with  good  buttermilk,  in  which,  he  avers, 
there  is  great  virtue.  He  writes  for  the  most 
part  only  in  fall  and  winter;  writing  best  when 
his  chimney  draws  best.  He  composes  only 
when  writing  is  play.  His  working  hours,  when 
he  does  write,  are  from  nine  or  ten  A.  M.  to 
two  or  three  P.  M.  Then  he  wants  his  dinner, 
and  after  that  a  brisk  walk  of  four  or  five  miles, 
rain  or  shine.  In  the  evening  he  reads  or  talks 
with  his  friends. 

When  Charles  Deslys,  the  French  novelist, 
begins  to  write  he  has  a  very  indistinct  idea  of 
what  he  is  about  to  compose  ;  but  after  a  while, 
becoming  interested  in  the  work,  he  writes  with 
increasing  pleasure,  and  the  clouds  which  shut 
out  the  subject  from  view  quickly  clear  away. 
He  never  makes  an  outline  beforehand.  He 
does  not  use  stimulating  drinks,  but  smokes 
much  ;  and  seldom  works  more  than  four  or  five 
hours  at  a  time.  At  Nice,  where  he  spends  his 
winters  now,  he  writes  all  the  morning,  from  eight 
o'clock  until  noon,  at  the  window,  which  is 
opened  wide  to  let  in  the  sunlight.  In  summer 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  89 

he  always  works  in  the  open  air,  preferably  at 
the  seashore  or  in  the  woods.  In  this  way  he 
composed  his  first  romances,  novels,  and  songs, 
writing  them  down  first  in  a  note-book,  which  he 
always  carried  with  him.  Sometimes  he  dic- 
tated to  a  secretary.  He  has  lost  that  faculty, 
and  now  must  write  down  everything  himself, 
either  at  his  table  or  his  writing-desk. 

John  Fiske,  the  evolutionist,  describes  him- 
self as  follows :  — 

"  I  am  forty-three  years  old  ;  six  feet  in  height, 
girth  of  chest,  forty-six  inches  ;  waist,  forty-four 
inches;  head,  twenty-four  inches;  neck,  eighteen 
inches  ;  arm,  sixteen  inches;  weight,  240  pounds  ; 
complexion,  florid;  hair,  auburn;  beard,  red." 

Professor  Fiske  is  a  fine  specimen  of  man- 
hood :  he  is  alert  and  active,  possesses  a  vora- 
cious appetite,  a  perfect  digestion,  and  ability  to 
sleep  soundly.  He  works  by  day  or  night  indif- 
ferently. His  method,  like  General  Grant's,  is 
to  "keep  hammering."  Sometimes  he  makes 
an  outline  first ;  but  scarcely  ever  changes  a 
word  once  written.  He  very  seldom  tastes  cof- 
fee or  wine,  or  smokes  a  cigar ;  but  he  drinks 
beer  freely,  and  smokes  tobacco  in  a  meerschaum 
pipe  nearly  all  the  time  when  at  work.  He  has 
been  in  the  habit  of  working  from  twelve  to  fifteen 
hours  daily  since  he  was  twelve  years  old. 
John  Fiske  is  one  of  the  healthiest  of  men,  and 
never  has  a  headache  or  physical  discomfort  of 


QO  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

any  sort.  He  prefers  to  work  in  a  cold  room, 
55°  to  60°  F.,  and  always  sits  in  a  draft  when  he 
can  find  one.  He  wears  the  thinnest  clothes  he 
can  find,  both  in  winter  and  summer.  Despite 
this  absence  of  precautions,  he  catches  cold 
only  once  in  three  or  four  years,  and  then  not  se- 
verely. He  never  experienced  the  feeling  of 
disinclination  for  work,  and,  therefore,  has  never 
had  to  force  himself.  If  he  feels  at  all  dull  when 
at  work,  he  restores  himself  by  a  half-hour  at 
the  piano. 

Ernest  Wichert,  who,  besides  being  an  hon- 
ored member  of  the  bar  of  Germany,  is  a  cele- 
brated novelist,  courts  the  muses  from  eight 
o'clock  in  the  morning  until  two  in  the  after- 
noon. After  five  P.  M.  he  attends  to  his 
correspondence  and  daily  professional  duties. 
Only  two  forenoons  in  the  week  are  taken  up  by 
his  duties  as  judge  of  the  superior  court  at 
Koenigsberg,  Prussia.  He  never  copies  a 
romance  or  novel  once  written,  but  leaves  a 
margin  for  alterations  and  additions.  When 
a  sentence — not  a  judicial  one  —  presents  any 
difficulty,  he  writes  it  out  hastily  on  a  small 
piece  of  paper  before  he  puts  it  down  in  the 
manuscript.  He  is  in  the  habit  of  revising  and 
copying  dramatic  work  at  least  three  times 
before  he  submits  it  to  a  stage-manager.  He  is 
very  much  addicted  to  the  use  of  tobacco,  and 
smokes  a  pipe  and  a  cigar  alternately.  He 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  9! 

smokes  at  all  times  of  the  day,  even  during 
working-hours.  Generally  he  sits  down  to 
write  ;  but  cannot  bear  to  have  a  pen  in  hand 
when  thinking  about  the  subject  of  his  work. 
He  is  accustomed  to  walk  up  and  down  the 
room  until  his  thoughts  have  assumed  a  definite 
form.  He  works  sometimes  from  five  to  six 
hours  successively.  He  cannot  write  when 
anybody  is  in  the  room,  and,  therefore,  always 
locks  the  doors  before  he  sits  down  to  his 
work.  Literary  labor  is  such  a  necessity  to 
Wi chert  that  he  invariably  feels  uncomfortable 
when  he  has  finished  one  work  without  begin- 
ning another  immediately. 

Many  of  the  friends  of  Jules  Claretie, 
the  famous  novelist,  often  are  at  a  loss 
to  account  for  his  great  fertility,  and  cannot 
see  how  he  manages  to  do  all  that  he  succeeds 
in  doing.  When  this  question  was  once  asked 
of  the  author,  he  replied,  smilingly :  "  I  am  used 
to  working,  love  to  work,  and  work  regularly  — 
without  excess,  and  with  constant  pleasure. 
Work  is,  with  certain  natures,  one  of  the  forms 
of  health."  Claretie's  pen  is  put  in  motion  only 
in  the  daytime  ;  at  night  it  rests,  like  the  genial 
man  himself.  When  the  author  feels  indisposed, 
he  does  not  write  except  for  journals  to  which 
matter  must  be  supplied  on  a  certain  date  ;  at- 
tacks of  neuralgia  and  nervous  headache  often 
interfere  with  his  work.  When  at  work  he  is 


92  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

in  the  habit  of  humming  various  tunes  without 
being  conscious  of  it.  When  work  is  easy  to 
him,  he  sings  ;  but  when  it  is  difficult,  a  dead  si- 
lence reigns  in  his  study.  Sometimes  work 
proves  exceedingly  hard  to  be  done  in  the  be- 
ginning, but  the  longer  he  writes  the  easier  it 
becomes.  Claretie  notes  down  all  ideas  that 
come  to  his  mind,  utilizing  them  afterward  for 
his  novels.  He  also  makes  a  detailed  outline 
of  his  romances ;  but  his  journalistic  articles  are 
composed  at  the  point  of  the  pen.  He  is  a  very 
fast  writer,  and  the  ink  on  one  page  is  often  not 
quite  dry  before  another  is  begun. 

Hermann  Rollet,  a  distinguished  Austrian 
author,  writes  on  scientific  topics  in  the  evening 
as  well  as  in  the  day-time.  With  him  poetry  is 
evolved,  almost  without  exception,  in  the  dead 
of  night,  when  he  lies  awake  after  having  slept 
a  few  hours.  He  invariably  makes  an  outline, 
and  when  his  manuscript  is  finished  he  im- 
proves it  as  much  as  possible.  There  must  be 
no  noise  in  the  room  where  he  works ;  outside 
din,  however,  does  not  affect  him.  When  Rol- 
let has  a  clear  conception  of  the  subject  in 
hand,  work  is  mere  play  to  him ;  otherwise,  it 
is  difficult  indeed.  The  author  has  one  great 
peculiarity,  which  is  seldom  met  with,  and 
has,  I  think,  never  been  noted  before.  When 
composing  poetry,  it  appears  to  him  as  if  he 
only  removes  by  the  act  of  writing  the  cov- 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  93 

ering  from  something  that  has  been  concealed, 
and  he  looks  upon  the  resulting  poem  as  if 
he  had  not  produced  it,  as  if  it  had  been  in 
existence  before,  and  as  if  he  had  but  re- 
vealed it.  Thus  generally  his  best  songs  are 
produced.  Sometimes  he  dreams  of  a  poem, 
verse  for  verse,  line  for  line.  If  he  happens  to 
wake  up  at  the  time,  and  strikes  a  light,  he  is 
able  to  write  down  literally  the  poem  of  which 
he  dreamt.  Frequently  he  forgets  all  about  his 
dream  after  it  is  written  down,  and  is  then 
greatly  astonished  in  the  morning  to  find  a 
finished  poem  on  his  writing-table.  He  says 
that  he  could  more  easily  split  wood  or  break 
stones  than  to  write  without  inclination.  He 
has  to  force  himself  merely  to  copy  what  he  has 
written. 


VI. 
Favorite  Habits  of  Work. 

John  G.  Whittier,  our  noble  Quaker  poet, 
used  to  say  that  he  never  had  any  method. 
"  When  I  felt  like  it,"  he  said  once,  "  I  wrote, 
and  I  neither  had  the  health  nor  the  patience 
to  work  afterward  over  what  I  had  written.  It 
usually  went  as  it  was  originally  completed." 

Whittier  preferred  the  daytime — and*the 
morning,  in  fact — for  writing,  and  used  no 
stimulants  whatever  for  literary  labor.  He 
made  no  outline  or  skeleton  of  his  work  —  and 
claimed  that  his  verses  were  made  as  the  Irish- 
man made  his  chimney  —  by  holding  up  one 
brick  and  putting  another  under.  He  was  sub- 
ject to  nervous  headache  all  his  life,  and  for  this 
reason  often  had  to  force  himself  to  work  when 
he  would  rather  have  rested,  especially  while 
he  was  associate  editor  of  the  National  Era 
and  other  papers. 

Philipp  Galen,  the  German  novelist,  composes 
during  the  daytime,  and  sometimes  labors  till 
ten  o'clock  in  the  evening.  He  makes  an 
outline  of  his  story  before  he  prepares  the 
"  copy  "  for  the  press.  He  requires  no  stimu- 
lants at  work,  but  when  he  is  through  he  rel- 
ishes a  glass  of  wine.  He  has  a  habit  of  per- 


METHODS   OF  AUTHORS.  9$ 

ambulating  the  room  when  engaged  in  medita- 
tion about  a  new  book,  and  he  writes  with  re- 
markable rapidity.  He  never  puts  pen  to  paper 
without  inclination,  because,  as  he  says,  he 
always  feels  disposed  to  do  literary  work. 
Formerly  he  worked  daily  from  twelve  to  four- 
teen hours ;  now  he  spends  only  from  six  to 
eight  hours  at  the  writing-desk  every  day. 

W.  D.  Howells  always  keeps  his  manuscript 
six  or  seven  months  ahead  of  the  time  for  pub- 
lication. Being  of  a  nervous  disposition,  he 
could  not  rely  on  himself  to  furnish  matter  at 
short  notice.  When  it  is  possible,  he  com- 
pletes a  book  before  giving  a  page  of  it  to  a 
magazine.  He  finds  the  morning  to  be  the  best 
time  for  brain-labor.  He  asserts  that  the  first 
half  of  the  day  is  the  best  part  of  a  man's  life, 
and  always  selects  it  for  his  working  hours.  He 
usually  begins  at  nine  and  stops  at  one,  and 
manages  in  that  time  to  write  about  a  dozen 
manuscript  pages.  After  that  he  enjoys  his 
leisure  ;  that  is,  he  reads,  corrects  proof,  walks 
about,  and  pays  visits.  When  he  went  to 
Venice  as  the  United  States  consul  he  soon 
threw  off  the  late-hour  habits  to  which  he  was 
accustomed  as  a  journalist  There  was  so 
little  to  keep  him  employed,  and  the  neighbor- 
hood was  so  quiet  and  delightful,  that  he  began 
doing  his  work  in  the  morning,  and  he  has  con- 
tinued the  habit  ever  since.  He  does  not  gen- 


96  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

erally  make  a  "  skeleton  "  of  his  work  ;.  in  fact, 
he  almost  never  does.  He  says  that  he  leans 
toward  indolence,  and  always  forces  himself 
more  or  less  to  work,  keeping  from  it  as  long 
as  he  can  invent  any  excuse.  He  often  works 
when  he  is  dull  or  heavy  from  a  bad  night,  and 
finds  that  the  indisposition  wears  off.  Howells 
rarely  misses  a  day  from  any  cause,  and,  for 
a  lazy  man,  as  he  calls  himself,  is  extremely 
industrious. 

Georgiana  M.  Craik  never,  except  on  the 
rarest  occasions,  wrote  at  night.  She  did  not 
always  make  an  outline  of  her  books  before- 
hand, but  generally  did  so.  She  wrote  from 
nine  A.  M.  until  two  P.  M.  in  winter,  and  in 
summer  she  seldom  wrote  at  all.  When  she 
once  began  to  write  a  book,  she  worked  at  it 
steadily  four  or  five  hours  every  day,  without 
any  regard  to  inclination. 

Dr.  Alfred  Friedmann,  a  witty  Austrian 
journalist,  writes  his  brilliant  articles  at  one 
sitting.  He  makes  few  corrections,  and,  some- 
times, before  the  ink  is  dry  on  the  "  copy,"  off 
it  goes  to  the  printer.  Whenever  he  feels  in 
need  of  refreshment,  he  gets  up  from  his  writ- 
ing-desk and  has  recourse  to  a  wine-bottle  near 
by.  He  never  performs  literary  labor  unless 
he  is  inclined  to  work.  Sometimes  he  does 
not  write  for  weeks,  and  then  again  he  writes 
half  a  book  at  a  time. 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  97 

J.  Scherr,  the  noted  professor  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  Zurich,  Switzerland,  who  is  a  novelist  as 
well  as  an  historian,  spends  his  forenoon  at  his 
writing-desk.  He  works  standing,  and  writes, 
when  in  good  health,  with  wonderful  facility. 
Formerly,  he  often  used  to  work  as  long  as  ten 
hours,  but  now  he  devotes  only  three  or  four 
hours  a  day  to  literary  work. 

Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson  composes 
always  in  the  daytime,  never  at  night.  He 
sometimes  makes  an  outline.  He  uses  no 
stimulants  while  at  work,  or  at  any  time.  He 
writes  for  from  three  to  five  hours  a  day.  He 
sometimes  forces  himself  to  "  drive  the  quill," 
but  rarely,  generally  enjoying  literary  work  very 
much. 

Ludwig  Auzengruber,  the  Austrian  story- 
teller, never  writes  at  night.  He  always  makes 
an  outline  of  his  work  at  the  beginning,  and  is 
addicted  to  tobacco,  which  he  consumes  when  at 
work.  He  is  in  the  habit  of  walking  up  and 
down  the  room  when  elaborating  a  new  story, 
and  never  writes  down  a  sentence  before  he 
has  pronounced  it  aloud.  Auzengruber  is  a 
very  industrious  man,  and  sometimes  writes  for 
as  many  as  eleven  hours  a  day. 

Gerhard  von  Amyntor,  who  is  one  of  the  best 
known  of  German  authors,  is  also  a  very  diligent 
writer.  He  composes  for  from  three  to  four 
hours  every  morning,  but  rarely  in  the  evening, 


98  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

and  never  at  night.  The  afternoon  and  evening 
are  spent  in  reading  or  conversation,  or  in  re- 
vising that  which  he  has  written  in  the  forenoon. 
He  never  makes  a  skeleton  of  his  work,  but  his 
manuscripts  are  copied  before  they  reach  the 
printer.  Tobacco  is  indispensable  to  him  when 
he  is  producing  poetry.  He  works  standing, 
and  in  solitude.  The  production,  in  the  mind, 
of  novels  and  fiction  generally  is  easy  to  him, 
but  the  mechanical  labor  of  writing  down  the 
product  of  his  imagination  he  deems  sad 
drudgery,  because  he  is  affected  by  writers' 
cramp,  and  he  never  sets  pen  to  paper  unless 
he  feels  disposed  to. 

Walt  Whitman  closely  adhered  to  his  home 
and  rooms.  His  income  was  just  sufficient  to 
make  both  ends  meet,  but  he  used  to  say  it  was 
adequate  to  the  wants  of  a  poet.  He  declared 
that  wealth  and  luxury  would  destroy  his  work- 
ing force.  The  poet  once  wrote  :  "  Twelve 
years  ago  I  came  to  Camden  to  die ;  but  every 
day  I  went  into  the  country,  and,  naked,  bathed 
in  sunshine,  lived  with  the  birds  and  the 
squirrels,  and  played  in  the  water  with  the 
fishes.  I  recovered  my  health  from  Nature. 
Strange  how  she  carries  us  through  periods  of 
infirmity,  into  the  realms  of  freedom  and  health." 

In  contradistinction  to  the  majority  of  authors, 
Hermann  Herberg,  German  novelist  and  jour- 
nalist, drives  the  pen  at  night.  He  invariably 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  99 

makes  an  outline  of  his  work  to  start  with,  and 
when  he  is  engaged  in  writing,  he  sips  coffee  and 
smokes.  To  him  literary  work  is  a  holiday 
task ;  yet  he  never  writes  unless  he  is  in  the 
proper  frame  of  mind,  spending  on  the  average 
three  hours  a  day  at  the  writing  table. 

The  method  of  Louisa  May  Alcott  was  a  very 
simple  one.  She  never  had  a  study;  and  an 
old  atlas  on  her  knee  was  all  the  desk  she 
cared  for.  Any  pen,  any  paper,  any  ink,  and 
any  quiet  place  contented  her.  Years  ago, 
when  necessity  drove  her  hard,  she  used  to  sit 
for  fourteen  hours  at  her  work,  doing  about 
thirty  pages  a  day,  and  scarcely  tasting  food 
until  her  daily  task  was  done.  She  never 
copied.  When  the  idea  was  in  her  head,  it 
flowed  into  words  faster  than  she  could  write 
them  down,  and  she  seldom  altered  a  line. 
She  had  the  wonderful  power  of  carrying  a 
dozen  plots  for  months  in  her  mind,  thinking 
them  over  whenever  she  was  in  the  mood,  to  be 
developed  at  the  proper  time.  Sometimes  she 
carried  a  plan  thus  for  years.  Often,  in  the 
dead  of  night,  she  lay  awake  and  planned  whole 
chapters,  word  for  word,  and  when  daylight 
came  she  had  only  to  write  them  down.  She 
never  composed  in  the  evening.  She  main- 
tained that  work  in  the  early  hours  gives  morn- 
ing freshness  to  both  brain  and  pen,  and  that 
rest  at  night  is  a  necessity  for  all  who  do  brain 


TOO  METHODS   OF  AUTHORS. 

work.  She  never  used  stimulants  of  any  kind. 
She  ate  sparingly  when  writing,  and  only  the 
simplest  food,  holding  that  one  cannot  preach 
temperance  if  one  does  not  practice  it.  Miss 
Alcott  affirmed  that  the  quality  of  an  author's 
work  depends  much  on  his  habits,  and  that 
sane,  wholesome,  happy,  and  wise  books  must 
come  from  clean  lives,  well-balanced  minds, 
spiritual  insight,  and  a  desire  to  do  good. 

Very  few  of  the  stories  of  the  author  of 
"  Little  Women  "  were  written  in  Concord,  her 
home.  This  peaceful,  pleasant  place,  the  fields 
of  which  are  classic  ground,  utterly  lacked  in- 
spiration for  Miss  Alcott.  She  called  it  "  this 
dull  town,"  and  when  she  had  a  story  to  write 
she  went  to  Boston,  where  she  shut  herself  up 
in  a  room,  and  emerged  only  when  she  could 
show  a  completed  work. 

August  Niemann,  the  German  novelist,  de- 
votes the  forenoon  to  literary  work,  but  never 
burns  midnight-oil  on  his  writing-desk.  He 
prepares  his  manuscript  at  the  outset  for  the 
press,  never  making  a  plan  beforehand.  He 
writes  with  great  facility,  but  only  when  he  feels 
like  it ;  when  disinclined,  he  does  not  touch  a 
pen  —  sometimes  he  will  not  write  for  weeks. 
When  he  is  especially  interested  in  a  topic,  he 
is  apt  to  write  for  from  four  to  six  hours  at  a 
stretch;  ordinarily  he  spends  two,  or,  at  the 
most,  three,  hours  a  day  at  the  writing-table. 


METHODS   OF    AUTHORS.  IOI 

Victor  Bliithgen,  one  of  the  most  noted 
German  authors,  prefers  the  daytime,  especially 
the  early  morning,  for  literary  labor;  and 
whenever  he  is  compelled  to  work  at  night,  in 
order  to  meet  engagements,  he  does  so  after 
ten  o'clock.  He  never  makes  a  skeleton  of  his 
work,  but  when  the  manuscript  is  completed, 
he  files  away  at  it,  and  even  makes  alterations 
in  the  proof-sheets.  While  at  work  he  smokes 
incessantly,  and  is  so  accustomed  to  the  stimu- 
lating effects  of  tobacco  that  he  cannot  get 
along  without  it.  He  walks  up  and  down  the 
room  while  meditating  on  the  plots  of  his 
stories.  When  he  elaborates  them  everything 
must  be  quiet  about  him,  for  every  loud  noise, 
especially  music,  agitates  him,  and  renders 
work  impossible.  Bliithgen  is  a  ready  writer, 
and  conception  and  composition  are  both  easy 
to  him.  He  always  forces  himself  to  write. 
When  he  is  beginning,  he  struggles  hard  to 
overcome  his  repugnance,  until  he  is  interested 
in  the  work,  when  he  composes  with  increasing 
pleasure  and  rapidity.  On  the  average,  he 
writes  for  from  three  to  six  hours  daily,  but 
never  more  than  three  hours  at  a  time.  When 
he  sits  down  to  the  desk  he  has  but  a  faint  idea 
of  the  novel  which  he  is  about  to  write,  being  in- 
capable of  working  out  the  details  of  a  story  in 
his  mind,  as  some  authors  are  able  to  do;  but 
with  the  ink  the  thoughts  begin  to  flow,  and  all 
difficulties  are  surmounted. 


102         METHODS.  OF  AUTHORS. 

Lucy  Larcom  declared  that  she  never  thought 
of  herself  as  an  author,  and  during  most  of  her 
life  her  occupation  was  that  of  a  teacher.  She 
wrote  always  before  she  taught,  and  in  the 
intervals  of  leisure  she  had,  —  she  used,  to  say 
because  her  head  and  pen  would  not  keep  still. 
She  always  wished  for  more  leisure  to  write, 
but  was  obliged  to  do  something  that  insured 
an  immediate  return  in  money,  —  in  fact,  she 
had  always  to  "  work  for  a  living."  So,  it  was 
her  habit  to  take  a  book  or  a  portfolio  in  her  lap, 
and  write  when  and  where  she  could.  She  did 
not  write  at  night,  because,  she  said,  she  had 
learned  that  she  must  sleep.  She  often  forced 
herself  to  write,  sometimes  through  an  entire 
day,  although  the  result  was  not  usually  so 
satisfactory  to  herself.  She  used  to  keep  writ- 
ing, even  if  she  felt  a  little  ill  and  tired,  because 
of  the  imperative  "must,"  and  because  she 
could  forget  her  bad  feelings  in  her  subject. 
She  began  to  write  as  a  little  child,  —  verses 
chiefly,  —  and  always  preferred  writing  to  doing 
anything  else.  Most  of  the  things  she  wrote 
seemed  to  her  to  come  of  themselves,  poems 
especially. 

To  the  large  number  of  those  who  prefer  the 
daytime  to  the  artificial  light  of  the  evening  or 
the  night  must  be  added  Rudolf  von  Gottschall, 
German  historian,  novelist,  and  essayist.  While 
at  work  he  is  in  the  habit  —  that  is  at  times  — 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  103 

of  chewing  paper.  He  writes  with  ease  and 
great  speed.  He  often  composes  when  disin- 
clined to  work,  compelled  by  his  occupation  as 
a  critic  and  journalist.  Only  when  he  is  writ- 
ing poetry  he  must  be  in  good  spirits.  He  de- 
votes about  five  hours  a  day  to  literary  work, 
exclusive  of  letter-writing  and  the  discharge  of 
his  editorial  duties. 

Before  committing  her  manuscripts  to  the 
press,  the  novelist,  Marian  Tenger  (a  pseu- 
donym which  stands  for  the  name  of  a  lady  of 
the  highest  German  aristocracy  ),  reads  them 
over  repeatedly,  and  makes  many  alterations. 
It  seems  incredible  to  her  that  any  author,  who 
is  attached  to  his  profession,  should  write  fair 
copy  at  once,  making  no  skeleton  of  his  work 
whatever.  She  invents  dialogues  most  easily 
when  she  is  perambulating  the  room.  VVhen 
disinclined  to  write,  she  refrains  from  touching 
a  pen.  Sometimes  weeks  elapse  before  she  re- 
sumes her  usual  occupation  —  writing  ;  but 
when  she  does  so,  it  is  with  delight.  She  never 
writes  for  more  than  five  hours  daily. 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  prefers  the  morning 
from  nine  o'clock  until  noon  for  work.  He 
used  to  write  evenings,  but  of  late  he  has  not 
done  so.  He  sometimes  plans  his  work  before- 
hand, but  is  apt  to  deviate  more  or  less  from 
the  outline  he  has  laid  down.  He  uses  no 
stimulants  at  his  work,  unless  his  cup  of  coffee 


104  METHODS    OF    AUTHORS. 

is  so  considered.  He  spends  sometimes  two  or 
three,  sometimes  four  or  five,  hours  a  day  at  his 
writing-table.  He  very  often  forces  himself  to 
write  when  he  has  an  uncompleted  task  before 
him.  He  must  have  a  pen  in  his  hand  when  he 
is  composing  in  prose  or  verse — it  seems  a 
kind  of  conductor,  without  which  his  thoughts 
will  not  flow  continuously  in  proper  order. 

Julius  Wolffe,  the  German  poet,  belongs  to 
those  who  never  work  at  night.  He  writes  from 
early  in  the  morning  until  the  late  hours  of  the 
afternoon.  He  makes  an  outline,  which,  how- 
ever, is  almost  equivalent  to  fair  copy,  since 
very  few  additions  and  alterations  are  ever 
made.  While  at  work  he  moderately  smokes 
cigars.  When  he  is  absorbed  in  cogitation  on 
a  subject  in  hand,  he  often  walks  up  and  down 
his  room.  He  writes  with  great  facility,  for  he 
never  treats  of  topics  that  art  not  congenial  to 
him.  He  is  a  very  industrious  man;  every  day 
finds  him  at  his  writing-desk,  where  he  spends 
from  eight  to  nine  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four. 

The  work  of  Edmund  Gosse  being  multiform 
and  very  pressing,  he  has  no  choice  between 
the  daytime  and  the  night,  and  must  use  both. 
The  central  hours  of  the  day  being  given  up  to 
his  official  business  for  the  government,  which 
consists  of  translation  from  the  various  European 
languages,  only  the  morning  and  the  evening 
remain  for  literary  work.  His  books  have 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  105 

mainly  been  written  between  eight  and  eleven 
P.  M.,  and  corrected  for  the  press  between  nine 
and  ten  A.  M.  He  finds  the  afternoon  almost 
a  useless  time.  In  his  estimation,  the  physical 
clockwork  of  the  twenty-four  hours  seems  to 
run  down  about  four  P.  M.,  —  at  least,  such  is  his 
experience.  He  makes  no  written  skeleton  or 
first  draft.  His  first  draft  is  what  goes  to  the 
printers,  and  commonly  with  very  few  altera- 
tions. He  rounds  off  his  sentences  in  his  head 
before  committing  them  to  paper.  He  uses  no 
stimulant  at  work.  He  drinks  wine  twice  a  day, 
but  after  dinner  he  neither  eats  nor  drinks.  He 
has  found  this  habit  essential  to  his  health 
and  power  of  work.  The  only  exception  he 
makes  is  that,  as  he  is  closing  for  the  night,  —  a 
little  before  eleven  o'clock,  —  he  takes  several 
cups  of  very  strong  tea,  which  he  has  proved  by 
experience  to  be  by  far  the  best  sedative  for  his 
nerves.  If  he  goes  to  bed  immediately  after 
this  strong  tea,  at  the  close  of  a  hard  day's 
work,  he  generally  sleeps  soundly  almost  as  soon 
as  his  head  is  on  the  pillow.  Coffee  keeps  him 
awake,  and  so  does  alcohol.  He  has  tried 
doing  without  wine,  but  has  always  returned  to 
it  with  benefit.  He  has  entirely  given  up 
tobacco,  which  never  suited  him.  He  can  work 
anywhere,  if  he  is  not  distracted.  He  has  no 
difficulty  in  writing  in  unfamiliar  places  —  the 
waiting-room  of  a  railway  station  or  a  rock  on 


I06  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

the  seashore  suits  him  as  well  (except  for 
the  absence  of  books  of  reference)  as  the 
desk  in  his  study.  He  cannot  do  literary  or 
any  other  brain-work  for  more  than  three 
hours  on  a  stretch,  and  believes  that  a  man  who 
will  work  three  hours  of  every  working-day  will 
ultimately  appear  to  have  achieved  a  stupen- 
dous result  in  bulk,  if  this  is  an  advantage. 
But,  then,  he  must  be  rapid  while  he  is  at  work, 
and  must  not  fritter  away  his  resources  on 
starts  in  vain  directions.  Gosse  is  utterly  un- 
able to  write  to  order,  —  that  is  to  say,  on  every 
occasion.  He  can  generally  write,  but  there 
are  occasions  when  for  weeks  together  he  is 
conscious  of  an  invincible  disinclination,  and 
this  he  never  opposes.  Consequently,  he  is  by 
temperament  unfitted  for  journalism,  in  which 
he  has,  he  thinks,  happily,  never  been  obliged 
to  take  any  part.  As  for  Mr.  Gosse's  verse,  it 
gets  itself  written  at  odd  times,  wholly  without 
rule  or  precedent,  and,  of  course,  cannot  be  sub- 
mitted to  rules  But  his  experience  is  that  the 
habit  of  regular  application  is  beneficial  to  the 
production  of  prose. 

Felix  Dahn,  whose  fertile  fancy  conjures  up 
romances  of  life  in  ancient  Rome,  always  writes 
by  the  light  of  day.  He  writes  with  great  facil- 
ity and  rapidity  ;  and  devotes  nine  hours  a  day 
to  literary  work.  His  manuscript  goes  to  the 
printer  as  it  is  originally  composed,  and  he  sel- 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  1 07 

dom  alters  a  line  after  it  is  once  committed  to 
paper. 

Albert  Traeger,  a  celebrated  German  poet, 
writes  in  the  afternoon,  —  after  three  o'clock,  by 
preference.  When  composing  prose,  he  writes 
fair  copy  at  once  ;  for  poems,  however,  he  makes 
an  outline,  which  is  hardly  ever  altered,  since  he 
completes  every  line  in  his  head  before  he  writes 
it  down.  While  at  work  he  constantly  smokes 
very  strong  cigars,  and  is  in  the  habit  of  sipping 
black  coffee  from  time  to  time.  The  poet  is  a 
ready  writer,  but  never  pens  a  single  sentence 
unless  he  feels  disposed  to  work.  Sometimes 
months  pass  before  he  takes  up  the  neglected 
pen  again. 

That  excellent  writer  of  short  stories,  Sarah 
Orne  Jewett,  composes  in  the  afternoon.  She 
does  not  make  a  formal  outline  of  her  work,  but 
has  a  rough  plan  of  it  in  her  own  head,  depend- 
ing most  upon  a  knowledge  of  the  chief  charac- 
ters. She  writes  for  about  four  hours  a  day, 
and  often  finds  the  first  ten  or  fifteen  minutes' 
work  an  effort,  but  after  that  she  can  almost 
always  go  on  easily. 

Thomas  Hardy  prefers  the  night  for  working, 
but  finds  the  use  of  daytime  advisable,  as  a 
rule.  He  follows  no  plan  as  to  outline,  and  uses 
no  stimulant  excepting  tea.  His  habit  is  to 
remove  boots  or  slippers  as  a  preliminary  to 
work.  He  has  no  definite  hours  for  writing, 
and  only  occasionally  works  against  his  will. 


108  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

W.  H.  Riehl,  who,  besides  being  a  professor  at 
the  University  of  Munich,  is  a  famous  novelist, 
always  writes  by  daylight.  He  carefully  out- 
lines his  work  beforehand,  and  repeatedly  re- 
vises it  before  it  is  printed.  When  engaged  in 
the  labor  of  composition,  he  smokes  one  cigar 
—  no  more.  He  invents  easily,  but  is  very 
painstaking  when  writing  down  his  thoughts, 
mercilessly  erasing  whatever  does  not  suit  him. 
He  takes  a  pen  to  hand  whenever  he  has  a 
leisure  moment,  sometimes  in  the  morning, 
sometimes  in  the  afternoon,  as  circumstances 
permit. 

The  renowned  divine,  Karl  Gersk,  who  is  the 
author  of  by  far  the  best  German  religious 
poems,  as  a  rule  makes  an  outline  before  com- 
posing poetry,  but  writes  down  prose  at  once. 
When  his  attention  is  taken  up  by  an  interesting 
topic,  he  is  in  the  habit  of  curling,  absent- 
mindedly,  one  of  his  occipital  locks  about  the 
left  index  finger.  He  rarely  writes  for  more 
than  six  hours  a  day,  and  then  only  when  he 
feels  especially  disposed  to  work. 

The  author  of  "  St.  Olave  "  always  writes  in 
the  daytime ;  namely,  from  nine  A.  M.  to  one  P. 
M. ;  and  does  not  make  any  outline  first,  but 
only  two  copies,  which  are  improved  afterward, 
the  first  copy  being  written  in  pencil,  and  the 
second  in  ink.  The  second  manuscript  is  re- 
vised and  corrected.  Day  by  day,  this  knight 


METHODS   OF  AUTHORS.  109 

of  the  pen  writes  during  the  stated  time,  unless 
prevented  by  illness  or  unexpected  engagements, 
and  does  not  wait  for  "feeling  disposed,"  but 
goes  steadily  on. 

R.  E.  Francillon  prefers  working  at  night, 
when  both  ideas  and  words  come  most  fluently. 
He  always  works  at  night,  and  'sometimes  all 
night,  when  he  works  against  time.  He  has  not 
then  to  conquer  an  unwillingness  to  work  which 
besets  him  at  other  hours.  Next  to  the  night- 
time, he  prefers  the  afternoon,  to  which  circum- 
stances practically  confine  him.  This  refers  to 
imaginative  work.  With  regard  to  journalistic 
and  critical  work  and  study,  it  is  just  the  re- 
verse, and  he  prefers  the  morning.  He  never 
makes  a  skeleton  of  his  work.  He  has  tried 
the  skeleton  method,  but  found  it  useless,  and 
broke  away  from  it  soon  after  starting.  He 
finds  that  incident  suggests  incident,  and  char- 
acters develop  themselves.  Of  course,  he  starts 
with  a  motive  ( in  the  technical  sense ),  and  a 
general  drift  and  color,  and  the  salient  points 
of  leading  characters.  He  uses  no  stimulant 
when  at  work,  except  tobacco  in  the  form  of 
cigarettes,  which  he  smokes  all  the  time,  what- 
ever he  is  doing,  even  when  writing  a  letter. 
Pen  and  cigarette  are  inseparable ;  but  he 
smokes  very  little  when  not  working,  and  next 
to  nothing  when  taking  a  holiday.  His  hours 
of  work  depend  very  much  on  necessity.  He 


IIO  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

is  engaged  on  a  newspaper  from  nine  A.  M.  till 
one  P.  M.  The  afternoon  and  evening  are 
devoted  to  fiction  or  whatever  other  work  he 
has  on  hand.  Practically  he  is  at  his  desk  all 
day,  an  industry  which  is  rendered  possible  by 
frequent  change  of  work.  He  constantly  forces 
himself  to  work,  dead  against  inclination;  and, 
though  it  may  seem  strange,  it  constantly  hap- 
pens that  the  less  the  original  inclination,  the 
better  the  result,  and  vice  versa.  Francillon  has 
no  faith  whatever  in  writing  upon  inclination, 
and  maintains  that  even  if  little  comes  of  work- 
ing when  disinclined,  the  little  is  something 
and  prevents  the  want  of  inclination  lasting,  be- 
sides preventing  one  from  yielding  easily.  He 
is  perfectly  indifferent  to  outside  noise,  and,  in- 
deed, to  almost  everything  that  most  people  find 
a  trial  to  the  nerves  —  except  conversation  in 
the  same  room.  He  has  worked  with  music 
playing  in  the  same  room,  and  has  not  even 
noticed  it. 

Hubert  H.  Bancroft,  the  historian  of  the 
Pacific  coast,  works  day  and  evening,  with  little 
interruption,  except  as  he  takes  a  walk  or  rides 
for  exercise  occasionally  in  the  afternoon.  He 
determines  that  a  certain  amount  of  work  shall 
be  accomplished  within  so  many  hours,  days, 
and  weeks,  and  so  is -always  stimulated  and 
successfully  accomplishes  the  allotted  task.  He 
frequently  writes  when  not  disposed  to  work. 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  Ill 

Richard  Schmidt  Cabanis,  the  German  humor- 
ist, has  often  spent  whole  nights  at  the  writing- 
desk.  When  composing  poetry  he  makes  an 
outline  beforehand,  otherwise  not.  Before  his 
manuscript  goes  to  press  he  carefully  revises  it 
and  strikes  out  a  great  deal.  He  is  very  fond 
of  French  red  wine,  which  he  imbibes  occasion- 
ally when  writing,  but  which  he  must  often 
forego  in  obedience  to  the  advice  of  his  physi- 
cians. The  only  peculiarity  of  which  he  is 
possessed  is  that  he  cannot  compose  unless  he 
is  alone,  and  he  scorns  even  dumb  company 
during  working  hours. 

Margaret  Eytinge  very  much  prefers  the 
morning  for  writing,  and  generally  spends  from 
eight  o'clock  until  eleven  or  twelve  at  her 
desk.  Of  course,  she  often  works  in  the  after- 
noon, and  sometimes,  though  very  rarely,  at 
night.  But  at  those  times  she  only  revises  and 
copies.  She  makes  a  slight  sketch  of  her  poem 
or  story  first  —  a  sketch  written  so  hastily  that 
it  would  be  impossible  for  anybody  but  herself 
to  decipher  it,  and  she  has  found  trouble  in 
making  it  out  herself  at  times.  Then  she 
proceeds  to  clothe  this  skeleton,  an  operation 
which  is  never  completed  satisfactorily  until 
after  at  least  three  times  trying.  She  always 
makes  it  a  point  to  produce  clean  manuscripts. 
She  cannot  write  at  all  with  people  about  her, 
or  in  an  unfamiliar  place,  and  must  be  in  her 


112  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

own  room,  at  her  own  desk,  and  secure  from 
interruption. 

That  astute  author  of  innumerable  novels, 
Charlotte  M.  Yonge,  never  works  at  night.  She 
does  not  write  any  outline  of  her  tales.  She  has 
such  an  outline  in  her  mind,  but  is  guided  by 
the  way  the  characters  shape  themselves.  She 
generally  composes  from  about  10.30  A.  M.  to 
1.30  P.  M.,  taking  odd  times  later  in  the  day 
for  proofs  and  letters.  Having  good  health,  she 
is  seldom  indisposed  for  work;  if  she  is,  she 
takes  something  mechanical,  such  as  translating 
or  copying. 

Dr.  Karl  Frenzel,  editor  of  one  of  the  leading 
Berlin  newpapers,  has  to  struggle  hard  at  first 
to  overcome  his  unwillingness  to  compose,  but 
after  he  has  written  for  some  time  any  aversion 
which  he  may  have  experienced  disappears.  He 
rarely  works  at  night,  never  after  midnight,  but 
prefers  the  evening  to  the  afternoon  for  liter- 
ary production.  He  sometimes  rewrites  whole 
pages  of  his  novels  two  or  three  times,  but 
never  makes  a  plan  beforehand.  He  has  the 
queer  habit  of  making  bread  pellets  while  at 
work ;  that  is,  whenever  he  is  absorbed  in 
thought.  He  writes  w;th  facility  and  swift- 
ness, devoting  from  three  to  four  hours  a  day 
to  literary  labor. 

Dr.  Otto  Franz  Gensichen,  German  drama- 
tist, poet,  and  essayist,  always  writes  in  the 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  Il3 

daytime,  almost  exclusively  in  the  forenoon, 
from  eight  till  twelve  o'clock.  He  makes  an 
exception  in  the  case  of  lyrical  poems,  which, 
of  course,  must  be  written  down  whenever  they 
occur  to  the  mind.  After  his  manuscript  is 
done,  he  polishes  it  here  and  there,  and  then 
copies  it ;  for  while  slowly  transcribing  he 
can  most  easily  detect  mistakes.  While  at 
work  in  the  morning  he  smokes  a  mild  cigar, 
which  is,  however,  sometimes  omitted.  When 
writing,  he  likes  to  have  as  much  light  and 
silence  about  him  as  he  can  possibly  attain. 
While  the  manuscript  lies  on  the  writing  table, 
and  the  author  is  meditating  on  the  subject  in 
hand,  he  is  in  the  habit  of  pacing  up  and  down 
the  room.  At  first  he  repeats  the  words  aloud 
to  test  their  euphonism  and  smoothness ;  he 
then  commits  the  spoken  words  to  paper.  He 
can  boast  of  himself  that  he  has  never  written  a 
line  "  invita  Musa"  without  being  fully  inclined 
to  composition.  Sometimes  he  does  not  write 
for  months,  but  when  the  proper  mood  takes 
possession  of  him,  he  is  very  industrious.  Even 
then,  however,  he  does  most  of  his  work  before 
midday,  and,  exceptionally,  from  five  till  eight 
in  the  afternoon.  As  he  is  a  bachelor  and 
given  up  altogether  to  authorship,  he  is  governed 
entirely  by  his  moods. 

Paul  Burani,  the  brilliant  Parisian  journalist 
and  dramatist,  is  forty  years  of  age,    married 


114  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

and  father  of  one  daughter, — Michelette, — owner 
of  the  house  he  lives  in,  and,  altogether,  the 
perfect  type  of  a  successful  literarian.  Before 
writing  a  play,  he  makes  a  very  elaborate  out- 
line, which  is  developed  afterward.  Ordinarily 
he  rewrites  a  play  three  times,  but  being  both 
a  ready  and  a  rapid  writer,  the  task  is  quickly 
accomplished.  When  compelled  to  stop  writ- 
ing in  consequence  of  fatigue  or  a  lack  of  inter- 
est, he  takes  up  something  else,  promenades  in 
his  garden,  or  smokes  a  cigar.  He  is  indiffer- 
ent to  noise,  and  can  compose  almost  anywhere. 
The  great  number  of  books  which  he  has  writ- 
ten has  given  him  the  reputation  of  being  one 
of  the  most  productive  authors  of  the  times,  but 
he  does  not  write  for  more  than  five  or  six  hours 
a  day. 

Ludwig  Habicht,  a  German  novelist,  loves  to 
write  by  the  light  of  the  sun,  and  invariably 
works  in  the  daytime,  never  at  night.  When 
his  manuscript  is  finished  and  corrected,  he  has 
it  copied  by  a  professional  copyist,  whereupon 
it  goes  to  the  compositor.  Habicht  prefers  to 
write  in  the  open  air,  and  does  not  use  a  writ- 
ing-desk. The  duration  of  his  working  hours 
depends  entirely  upon  his  health  and  moods, 
but  he  never  writes  for  more  than  four  or  five 
hours  a  day ;  and  sometimes  does  not  pen  a  line 
for  months. 

Formerly,  when  the  world  —  that  is  to  say,  the 


METHODS   OF  AUTHORS.  115 

German  world  —  used  to  know  Karl  Stelter,  the 
poet,  as  a  merchant,  he  was  in  the  habit  of 
spending  his  leisure  hours  in  the  evening  in  the 
production  of  poetry,  and,  strange  though  it  may 
seem,  his  best  poems  were  made  after  a  hard 
day's  work.  Now,  since  he  has  retired  from 
business  and  is  in  prosperous  circumstances, 
he  versifies  whenever  and  wherever  he  wants 
to,  in  the  evening  as  well  as  in  the  daytime. 
He  writes  his  poems  with  a  lead  pencil,  and 
polishes  them  for  weeks  before  they  are  pub- 
lished. He  works  with  great  ease,  and  is  a 
ready  improviser ;  but  he  never  writes  against 
his  inclination. 

Brander  Matthews  does  his  work  between 
breakfast  and  lunch,  as  a  rule ;  and  works  at 
night  only  occasionally.  He  makes  elaborate 
notes,  and  then  writes  at  white  heat,  revising  at 
his  leisure. 

Andrd  Theuriet,  the  Parisian  novelist,  makes 
an  outline  of  his  work  first ;  he  delineates  each 
chapter  of  his  novel,  indicating  the  situations, 
personages,  dialogues,  and  so  on.  Thereupon 
the  novel  soon  assumes  a  definite  form.  Theu- 
riet spends  six  hours  a  day  at  his  writing-desk, 
but  always  in  the  morning.  He  does  not  be- 
lieve in  night  work.  In  the  afternoon  he  revises 
the  work  of  the  previous  day.  During  working 
hours  the  author  drinks  two  cups  of  tea  and 
smokes  one  or  two  pipes  of  tobacco.  Theuriet 


Il6  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

retires  early  in  the  evening,  between  ten  and 
eleven  o'clock,  and  rises  in  the  morning  at  a 
quarter  before  six.  This  regular  mode  of  life 
explains  why  the  novelist  is  able  to  write  so 
much,  and  is  a  key  to  the  productiveness  which 
has  astonished  his  contemporaries. 

Paul  Lindau,  another  German  novelist,  critic, 
and  journalist,  dictates  a  great  deal,  sometimes 
without  inclination,  and  sometimes  after  hasty 
lead-pencil  sketches.  When  he  writes  himself 
only  one  manuscript  is  made.  He  incessantly 
smokes  cigarettes  while  at  work.  Only  when 
he  has  labored  uninterruptedly  a  long  time  does 
he  refresh  himself  with  coffee,  tea,  wine,  and 
water.  As  a  rule,  Lindau  writes  with  ease.  He 
declares  that  dictating  tires  him  out  more  than  if 
he  should  write  himself,  but  by  dictation  he  is 
enabled  to  do  twice  as  much  work  as  he  could 
otherwise  accomplish.  Generally,  he  writes 
for  from  four  to  five  hours  a  day,  but  sometimes 
he  has  spent  ten  or  even  eleven  hours  in  literary 
work. 

A.  v.  Winterfeld,  the  German  humorist, 
devotes  the  day  only  to  literary  work.  His 
original  manuscript  is  committed  to  the  press, 
for  he  never  copies  what  he  has  written.  He 
composes  with  great  ease  and  swiftness,  and 
spends  four  hours  a  day  at  the  writing-desk. 

Hector  Malot,  the  Parisian  novelist,  makes 
an  outline  of  his  romances  beforehand,  faintly 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  117 

indicating  all  important  incidents  of  his  work. 
He  does  not  take  stimulating  drinks,  either 
when  at  work  or  when  at  rest ;  with  him  the  work 
itself  acts  as  a  stimulant.  He  rises  at  five 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  writes  till  eleven. 
After  breakfast  he  takes  a  walk.  At  two 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon  he  resumes  work  and 
keeps  at  it  until  seven  o'clock  in  the  evening ; 
but  he  never  composes  at  night.  Nine  months 
of  the  year  are  devoted  to  literary  labor,  but  the 
remaining  three  months  he  spends  in  travel, 
study,  and  recreation. 

Victorien  Sardou,  the  dramatist,  writes  his 
play  twice ;  first  on  little  scraps  of  paper,  then 
on  foolscap.  The  first  draft,  when  it  is  finished, 
is  a  maze  of  alterations  and  delineations. 

Mezerai,  the  famous  historian,  used  to  study 
and  write  by  candle-light,  even  at  noonday  in 
summer,  and,  as  if  thej  e  had  been  no  sun  in  the 
world,  always  waited  upon  his  company  to  the 
door  with  a  candle  in  his  hand. 

"  The  method  of  Buckle,  the  historian,"  so 
says  his  biographer,  "was  chiefly  remarkable 
for  careful,  systematic  industry,  and  punctilious 
accuracy.  His  memory  appeared  to  be  almost 
faultless,  yet  he  took  as  much  precaution  against 
failure  as  if  he  dared  not  trust  it.  He  invariably 
read  with  "  paper  and  pencil  in  his  hand,  making 
copious  references  for  future  consideration. 
How  laboriously  this  system  was  acted  upon 


Il8  METHODS    OF    AUTHORS. 

can  be  appreciated  only  by  those  who  have  seen 
his  note-books,  in  which  the  passages  so  marked 
during  his  reading  were  either  copied  or  re- 
ferred to  under  proper  heads.  Volume  after 
volume  was  thus  filled,  everything  being  written 
with  the  same  precise  neatness  that  characterizes 
his  manuscript  for  the  press,  and  indexed  with 
care,  so  that  immediate  reference  might  be  made 
to  any  topic.  But,  carefully  as  these  extracts 
and  references  were  made,  there  was  not  a  quo- 
tation in  one  of  the  copious  notes  that  accom- 
panied his  work  that  was  not  verified  by  collation 
with  the  original  from  which  it  was  taken." 

Joaquin  Miller  says  that  he  has  always  been 
so  poor,  or,  rather,  has  had  so  many  depending 
on  his  work,  that  he  has  "  never  been  able  to  in- 
dulge the  luxury  of  habits,"  and  that  he  has 
worked  in  a  sort  of  "  catch-as-catch-can  "  way. 
Having  been  mostly  on  the  wing  since  he  began 
writing,  he  has  done  his  work  in  all  kinds  of 
ways,  and  hours,  and  houses.  However,  now, 
since  he  has  a  little  home,  his  life  has  become 
regulated.  He  rises  at  daylight,  so  as  to 
save  candles,  and  never  works  at  night.  After 
he  has  made  and  imbibed  his  coffee,  he  digs  or 
pulls  weeds,  and  cultivates  his  flowers,  or  works 
in  some  way  about  the  greens,  for  an  hour  or 
so,  and  at  length,  when  he  feels  compelled  to 
literary  work,  and  can  no  longer  keep  from  it,  he 
writes  whatever  he  feels  that  he  must  set  down : 


METHODS   OF  AUTHORS.  1 19 

and  then  he  writes  only  as  long  as  he  feels  im- 
pelled. Holding,  as  he  does,  that  all  modern 
authors  think  too  little  and  write  too  much,  he 
never  writes  as  long  as  he  can  keep  from  it.' 
He  looks  forward  with  hope  and  pleasure  to 
the  day  when  he  shall  be  able  to  stop  writing 
entirely.  As  for  stimulants,  he  never  takes 
them.  Yet  he  often  smokes  a  cigar  about  the 
greens  before  beginning  work.  But  he  would 
be  ill  if  he  attempted  to  drink  while  writing. 
As  for  making  an  outline  of  his  work,  he  gener- 
ally jots  down  a  lot  of  sketches  or  pictures,  one 
each  day  ;  then  he  puts  these  together,  and  the 
play,  poem,  or  novel  is  finished.  He  works  for 
from  three  to  five  hours  every  day,  then  goes 
out  till  dinner  time.  He  once  lived  in  a  rude 
log  cabin,  built  on  an  eminence  overlooking  the 
city  of  Washington,  D.  C.  There  his  latch- 
string  was  always  out.  He  now  lives  near  Oak- 
land, Calif.,  not  in  one  cabin,  but  in  three,  each 
as  rude  as  that  of  any  settler  in  the  Sierras. 

George  Manville  Fenn,  during  a  period  of 
some  eighteen  years,  has  tried  a  good  many 
plans,  with  the  result  of  settling  down  for  the 
last  twelve  or  fourteen  years  to  one  alone.  He 
prefers  the  daytime  decidedly  for  mental  work, 
because  the  brain  is  fresh  and  vigorous  from 
the  rest  of  the  past  few  hours,  and  because  the 
work  produced  is  lighter  and  better  and  can  be 
sustained  longer;  and  the  writer  is  not  ex- 


120  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

hausted  when  he  leaves  his  table.  Brilliant 
work  has  often  been  done  at  night:  but  when 
Fenn  has  made  the  trial  he  has  found  the  re- 
sults of  a  month's  day-work  better,  and  there 
has  been  more  in  quantity.  He  invariably  makes 
an  outline  or  skeleton  of  his  work,  and  often 
with  his  story  first  in  a  dramatic  form,  which, 
he  thinks,  adds  much  to  the  vigor  and  effect  of 
a  tale.  He  is  in  the  habit  of  using  tobacco,  but 
has  never  looked  upon  it  as  a  stimulus,  regard- 
ing it  rather  as  a  soothing  aid  to  reflection. 
He  dines  early,  so  as  to  have  the  evenings  free. 
The  afternoon  is  spent  in  work,  a  visit  to  town, 
or  a  chat  with  friends ;  he  takes  tea  early,  —  at 
six,  — and  afterward  often  writes  for  two  or 
three  hours.  For  years  Mr.  Fenn  has  been  try- 
ing to  solve  this  problem  :  Why  can  one  write 
easily  and  fairly  well  one  day,  and  have  the  next 
be  almost  a  blank  ?  After  long  study  and  much 
musing,  he  has  come  to  the  detemination  that 
he  knows  nothing  whatever  about  it,  and  that 
the  only  thing  to  do  is  to  lead  as  quiet  and  tem- 
perate a  life  as  one  can.  Of  course,  the  stimu- 
lated and  excited  brain  will  produce  a  few  weird 
and  powerful  bits  of  work ;  but,  judging  from 
what  Mr.  Fenn  has  seen,  the  loaded  mind  soon 
breaks  down. 


VII. 
Goethe,  Dickens,  'Schiller,  and  Scott. 

Goethe  was  a  believer  in  the  pleasant  doc- 
trine that  the  highest  and  freest  work  can  be 
done  under  the  healthiest  conditions  of  fresh 
air,  early  hours,  daylight,  and  temperance  — 
which  does  not  mean  abstinence.  He  and 
Balzac  are  at  precisely  opposite  pales  in  their 
method  of  working.  Here  is  the  account  of 
Goethe's  days  at  Weimar,  according  to  G.  H. 
Lewes :  He  rose  at  seven.  Till  eleven  he 
worked  without  interruption.  A  cup  of  choco- 
late was  then  brought,  and  he  worked  on  again 
till  one.  At  two  he  dined.  His  appetite  was 
immense.  Even  on  the  days  when  he  com- 
plained of  not  being  hungry,  he  ate  much  more 
than  most  men.  He  sat  a  long  while  over  his 
wine,  chatting  gayly  ;  for  he  never  dined  alone. 
He  was  fond  of  wine,  and  drank  daily  his  two 
or  three  bottles.  There  was  no  dessert  —  Bal- 
zac's principal  meal  —  nor  coffee.  Then  he 
went  to  the  theatre,  where  a  glass  of  punch  was 
brought  to  him  at  six,  or  else  he  received 
friends  at  home.  By  ten  o'clock  he  was  in  bed, 
where  he  slept  soundly.  Like  Thorwaldsen,  he 
had  a  talent  for  sleeping. 

No   man  of  business   or  dictionary    maker 


122  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

could  make  a  more  healthy  arrangement  of  his 
hours.  The  five  or  six  hours  of  regular  morn- 
ing work,  which  left  the  rest  of  the  day  open 
for  society  and  recreation,  the  early  habits,  the 
full  allowance  of  sleep,  and  the  rational  use  of 
food  are  in  glaring  contrast  to  Balzac's  short 
and  broken  slumbers,  his  night  work,  and  his 
bodily  starvation.  Goethe  differed  from  almost 
every  other  great  poet  in  not  doing  his  greatest 
work  at  a  white  heat ;  and  not  only  so,  but  he 
differed  also  in  constantly  balancing  his  reason- 
ing against  his  creative  faculties.  Those  long 
mornings  of  early  work  were  not  always  spent 
in  the  fever  of  creation.  He  was  a  physiolo- 
gist, a  botanist,  a  critic ;  and  the  longer  he 
lived,  the  more  of  a  savant  he  became,  if  not  less 
of  a  poet.  His  imagination  was  most  fertile 
before  he  settled  down  into  these  regular  ways, 
but  not  before  he  settled  down  into  a  full  appre- 
ciation of  wine.  Balzac  would  write  the  draft 
of  a  whole  novel  at  a  sitting,  and  then  develop 
it  on  the  margins  of  proofs,  revises,  and  re- 
revises.  Goethe  acted  as  if  while  art  is  long, 
life  were  long  also.  Till  the  contrary  is  proved, 
we  must  consistently  hold  that  Goethe  was 
the  philosopher  before  dinner-time,  and  the 
poet  in  the  theatre,  or  during  those  long  after- 
dinner  hours  over  his  two  or  three  bottles  of 
wine.  That  these  later  hours  were  often  spent 
socially  proves  nothing,  one  way  or  the  other. 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  123 

Some  men  need  such  active  influences  as  their 
form  of  mental  stimulus.  Alfieri  found,  or 
made,  his  ideas  while  listening  to  music  or  gal- 
loping on  horseback.  Instances  are  common 
in  every-day  life  of  men  who  cannot  think  to 
good  purpose  when  shut  up  in  a  room  with  a 
pen,  and  who  find  their  best  inspiration  in  wan- 
dering about  the  streets  and  hearing  what  they 
want  in  the  rattle  of  cabs  and  the  seething  of 
life  around  them,  like  the  scholar  of  Padua, 
whose  conditions  of  work  are  given  by  Mon- 
taigne as  a  curiosity :  "  I  lately  found  one  of  the 
most  learned  men  in  France  studying  in  the 
corner  of  a  room,  cut  off  by  a  screen,  sur- 
rounded by  a  lot  of  riotous  servants.  He  told 
me  —  and  Seneca  says  much  the  same  himself 
—  that  he  worked  all  the  better  for  this  uproar, 
as,  if  overpowered  by  noise,  he  was  obliged  to 
withdraw  all  the  more  closely  into  himself  for 
contemplation,  while  the  storm  of  voices  drove 
his  thoughts  inward.  When  at  Padua  he  had 
lodged  so  long  over  the  clattering  of  the  traffic 
and  the  tumult  of  the  streets,  that  he  had  been 
trained  not  only  to  be  indifferent  to  noise,  but 
even  to  require  it  for  the  prosecution  of  his 
studies." 

Goethe  abominated  smoking,  though  he  was 
a  German.  Bayard  Taylor  says  that  he  toler- 
ated the  use  of  the  pipe  by  Schiller  and  his 
sovereign,  Carl  August,  but  otherwise  he  was 


124  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

very  severe  in  denouncing  it.  Goethe  himself 
somewhere  says  that  "  with  tobacco,  garlic, 
bed-bugs,  and  hypocrites  he  should  wage  per- 
petual war." 

We  learn  from  Mr.  Forster  that  "method  in 
everything  was  Dickens'  peculiarity,  and  be- 
tween breakfast  and  luncheon,  with  rare  excep- 
tions, was  his  time  of  work.  But  his  daily 
walks  were  less  of  rule  than  of  enjoyment  and 
necessity.  In  the  midst  of  his  writing  they 
were  indispensable,  and  especially,  as  it  has 
been  shown,  at  night."  When  he  had  work  on 
hand  he  walked  all  over  the  town  furiously,  and 
in  all  weathers,  to  the  injury  of  his  health  ;  and 
his  walks,  be  it  observed,  were  frequently  what 
Balzac's  always  were  —  at  night;  so  that,  in  the 
matter  of  hours,  he  must  be  taken  as  having 
conformed  in  some  important  respects  to  Bal- 
zac's hygiene.  Now,  Goethe  was  also  an  essen- 
tially out-of-doors  man  by  nature  —  not  one  to 
let  his  pen  do  his  imagining  for  him.  He  was 
no  slave  of  the  ink-bottle,  as  some  are,  who  can- 
not think  without  the  feather  of  a  goose  in  their 
hands,  by  way  of  a  sometimes  appropriate  talis- 
man. There  is  a  well-known  passage  in  one  of 
the  Roman  elegies  to  the  effect  that  inspiration 
is  to  be  sought  more  directly  than  within  the 
four  walls  of  a  study,  and  that  the  rhythm  of  the 
hexameter  is  not  best  drummed  with  the  fingers 
on  a  wooden  table ;  and  if  it  is  true,  as  the 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  125 

author  tells,  that  "  youth  is  drunkenness  with- 
out wine,"  it  seems  to  follow,  according  to  his 
experience,  that  those  two  or  three  bottles  of 
wine  are  not  altogether  needless  as  an  aid  to 
inspiration  when  youth  is  gone  by. 

Schiller  could  never  leave  off  talking  about 
his  poetical  projects,  and  thus  he  discussed 
with  Goethe  all  his  best  pieces,  scene  after 
scene.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  contrary  to 
Goethe's  nature,  as  he  told  Eckermann,  to  talk 
over  his  poetic  plans  with  anybody  —  even  with 
Schiller.  He  carried  everything  about  with 
him  in  silence,  and  usually  nothing  of  what  he 
was  doing  was  known  to  any  one  until  the 
whole  was  completed. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  was  one  of  the  most  indus- 
trious of  writers.  He  rose  early,  and  accom- 
plished a  good  day's  literary  work  before  half 
the  world  was  out  of  bed.  Even  when  he  was 
busiest,  he  seldom  worked  as  late  as  noon.  His 
romances  were  composed  with  amazing  rap- 
idity; and  it  is  an  astonishing  fact,  that  in  less 
than  two  weeks  after  his  bankruptcy  Scott 
wrote  an  entire  volume  of  "  Woodstock."  His 
literary  labors  yielded  him  $50,000  a  year. 
Two  thousand  copies  of  "  The  Lady  of  the 
Lake  "  were  sold  within  a  few  months. 

Many  of  the  more  energetic  descriptions  in 
"  Marmion,"  and  particularly  that  of  the  battle 
of  Flodden,  were  struck  off,  according  to  Mr. 


126  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

Skene's  account,  while  Scott  was  out  with  his 
cavalry,  in  the  autumn  of  1807.  In  the  inter- 
vals of  drilling,  we  are  told,  Scott  used  to  de- 
light "  in  walking  his  powerful  black  steed  up 
and  down  by  himself  upon  the  Portobello  sands, 
within  the  beating  of  the  surge  ;  and  now  and 
then  you  would  see  him  plunge  in  his  spurs, 
and  go  off  as  if  at  the  charge,  with  the  spray 
dashing  about  him.  As  we  rode  back  to  Mus- 
selburgh,  he  often  came  and  placed  himself 
beside  me,  to  repeat  the  verses  that  he  had 
been  composing  during  these  pauses  of  our 
exercise." 

In  after  years,  Mr.  Cadell,  then  a  guest  at 
Abbotsford,  observing  how  his  host  was  har- 
rassed  by  lion-hunters,  and  what  a  number  of 
hours  he  spent  daily  in  the  company  of  his 
work-people,  expressed  his  wonder  that  Scott 
should  ever  be  able  to  work  at  all  while  in  the 
country.  "Oh,"  said  Sir  Walter,  "  I  lie  simmer- 
ing over  things  for  an  hour  or  so  before  I  get 
up;  and  there's  the  time  I'm  dressing  to  over- 
haul my  half-sleeping,  half-waking  projet  de 
chapitre,  and  when  I  get  the  paper  before  me, 
it  commonly  runs  off  pretty  easily.  Besides,  I 
often  take  a  doze  in  the  plantations,  and  while 
Tom  [  Purdie  ]  marks  out  a  dyke  or  a  drain  as  I 
have  directed,  one's  fancy  may  be  running  its 
ain  rigs  in  some  other  world." 

By  far  the  greater  portion  of  "  The  Bride  of 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  127 

Lammermoor,"  the  whole  of  "  The  Legend  of 
Montrose,"  and  almost  the  whole  of  "  Ivanhoe  " 
were  dictated  under  the  terrible  stimulus  of 
physical  pain,  which  wrung  groans  from  the 
author  between  the  words.  The  very  two 
novels  wherein  the  creative  power  of  the  arch- 
master  of  romance  shows  itself  most  strongly 
were  composed  in  the  midst  of  literal  birth- 
throes.  Laidlaw  would  often  beseech  Sir 
Walter  affectionately  to  stop  dictating,  when 
his  audible  suffering  filled  every  pause.  It  was 
then  he  made  that  grimmest  of  all  bad  puns : 
"  Nay,  Willie,"  addressing  Laidlaw,  who  wrote 
for  him  and  implored  him  to  rest,  "  only  see 
that  the  doors  are  fast.  I  would  fain  keep  all 
the  cry,  as  well  as  all  the  wool,  to  ourselves  ;  but 
as  to  giving  over  work,  that  can  be  done  only 
when  I  am  in  woollen."  John  Ballantyne,  his 
other  faithful  amanuensis,  after  the  first  day, 
took  care  to  have  always  a  dozen  of  pens  made 
before  he  seated  himself  opposite  the  sofa  on 
which  Scott  lay,  the  sufferer  usually  continuing 
his  sentence  in  the  same  breath,  though  he 
often  turned  himself  on  his  pillow  with  a  groan 
of  anguish.  "  But  when  a  dialogue  of  peculiar 
animation  was  in  progress,  spirit  seemed  to  tri- 
umph altogether  over  matter :  he  arose  from 
his  couch  and  walked  up  and  down  the  room, 
raising  and  lowering  his  voice,  and,  as  it  were, 
acting  the  parts." 


128  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

In  this  last  particular  we  are  reminded  of  the 
celebrated  Russian  author,  Gogol,  whose  prac- 
tice it  is  said  to  have  been  in  composing  a  dia- 
logue to  recite  all  the  different  speeches  in  char- 
acter before  committing  them  to  paper,  to 
assure  himself  of  their  being  in  complete  con- 
sonance with  what  the  character  and  situation 
required. 

So  far  from  affording  any  argument  to  the 
contrary,  the  history  of  the  years  during  which 
Sir  Walter's  hand  was  losing  its  cunning  seems 
to  illustrate  the  penalty  of  trying  to  reconcile 
two  irreconcilable  things  —  the  exercise  of  the 
imagination  to  its  fullest  extent,  and  the  observ- 
ance of  conditions  that  are  too  healthy  to  nour- 
ish a  fever.  Apropos  of  his  review  of  Ritson's 
"  Caledonian  Annals,"  he  himself  says :  "  No 
one  that  has  not  labored  as  I  have  done  on  imag- 
inary topics  can  judge  of  the  comfort  afforded  by 
walking  on  all-fours,  and  being  grave  and  dull." 
There  spoke  the  man  who  habitually,  and  with- 
out artificial  help,  drew  upon  his  imagination  at 
the  hours  when  instinct  has  told  others  they 
should  be  employing,  not  their  fancy,  but  their 
reason.  The  privilege  of  being  healthily  dull 
before  breakfast  must  have  been  an  intense  re- 
lief to  one  who  compelled  himself  to  do  un- 
healthy or  abnormal  work  without  the  congenial 
help  of  abnormal  conditions.  Herder,  in  like 
manner,  is  accused  by  De  Quincey,  in  direct 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  1 29 

terms,  of  having  broken  down  prematurely  be- 
cause he  "  led  a  life  of  most  exemplary  temper- 
ance. Surely,  if  he  had  been  a  drunkard  or  an 
opium-eater,  he  might  have  contrived  to  weather 
the  point  of  sixty  years."  This  is  putting  things 
pretty  strongly;  but  it  is  said  of  a  man  of  great 
imaginative  power  by  a  man  of  great  imagi- 
native power,  and  may,  therefore,  be  taken 
as  the  opinion  of  an  expert,  all  the  more  honest 
because  he  is  prejudiced.  A  need  must  be 
strongly  felt  to  be  expressed  with  such  daring 
contempt  for  popular  axioms. 

The  true  working-life  of  Scott,  who  helped 
nature  by  no  artificial  means,  lasted  for  no 
more  than  twelve  years,  from  the  publication  of 
"  Waverley  "  until  the  year  in  which  his  genius 
was  put  into  harness ;  so  that,  of  the  two  men, 
Scott  and  Balzac,  who  both  began  a  literary 
life  at  nearly  the  same  age,  and  were  both 
remarkable  for  splendid  constitutions,  the 
man  who  lived  abnormally  surpassed  the  man 
who  lived  healthily  by  fully  eight  years  of 
good  work,  and  kept  his  imagination  in  full 
vigor  to  the  end. 

It  is  amusing  to  read  Sir  Walter's  candid 
avowal,  when  beginning  the  third  volume  of 
"Woodstock,"  that  he  "  had  not  the  slightest 
idea  how  the  story  was  to  be  wound  up  to  a 
catastrophe."  He  declares  he  never  could  lay 
down  a  plan  —  or  that,  if  he  had  laid  one  down,  he 


130  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

never  could  stick  to  it.  "  I  tried  only  to  make 
that  which  I  wa's  writing  diverting  and  interest- 
ing, leaving  the  rest  to  fate.  This  habnab  at  a 
venture  is  a  perilous  style,  I  grant,  but  I  can- 
not help  it." 


VIII. 
Burning  Midnight  Oil. 

That  night,  and  not  morning,  is  most  appropri- 
ate to  imaginative  work  is  supported  by  a  gen- 
eral consent  among  those  who  have  followed  in- 
stinct in  this  matter.  Upon  this  question, 
which  can  scarcely  be  called  vexed,  Charles 
Lamb  is  the  classical  authority:  "No  true 
poem  ever  owed  its  birth  to  the  sun's  light. 
The  mild,  internal  light,  that  reveals  the  fine 
shapings  of  poetry,  like  fires  on  the  domestic 
hearth,  goes  out  in  the  sunshine.  Milton's 
'  Morning  Hymn  in  Paradise,'  we  would  hold 
a  good  wager,  was  penned  at  midnight,  and 
Taylor's  rich  description  of  a  sunrise  smells  de- 
cidedly of  a  taper."  "This  view  of  evening 
and  candle-light,"  to  quote  his  commentator, 
De  Quincey,  once  more,  "as  involved  in  the 
full  delight  of  literature,"  may  seem  no  more 
than  a  pleasant  extravaganza,  and  no  doubt  it  is 
in  the  nature  of  such  gayeties  to  travel  a  little 
.into  exaggeration  ;  but  substantially  it  is  certain 
that  Lamb's  sincere  feelings  pointed  habitually 
in  the  direction  here  indicated.  His  literary 
studies,  whether  taking  the  color  of  tasks  or 
diversions,  courted  the  aid  of  evening,  which,  by 
means  of  physical  weariness,  produces  a  more 


132  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

luxurious  state  of  repose  than  belongs  to  the 
labor  hours  of  day;  they  courted  the  aid  of 
lamp-light,  which,  as  Lord  Bacon  remarked, 
"gives  a  gorgeousness  to  human  pomps  and 
pleasures,  such  as  would  be  vainly  sought  from 
the  homeliness  of  day-light."  Those  words, 
"physical  weariness,"  if  they  do  not  contain 
the  whole  philosophy  of  the  matter,  are  very 
near  it,  and  are,  at  all  events,  more  to  the  point 
than  the  quotation  from  Lord  Bacon.  They 
almost  exactly  define  that  unnatural  condition 
of  the  body  which,  on  other  grounds,  appears 
to  be  proper  to  the  unnatural  exercise  of  the 
mind.  It  will  be  remembered  that  Balzac  rec- 
ommended the  night  for  the  artist's  work,  the 
day  for  the  author's  drudgery.  Southey,  who 
knew  as  well  as  anybody  who  ever  put  pen  to 
paper  how  to  work,  and  how  to  get  the  best 
and  the  most  out  of  himself,  and  who  pursued 
the  same  daily  routine  through  his  whole  liter- 
ary life,  performed  his  tasks  in  the  following 
order  :  From  breakfast  till  dinner,  history,  tran- 
scription for  the  press,  and,  in  general,  all  the 
work  that  Scott  calls  "  walking  on  all-fours." 
From  dinner  till  tea,  reading,  letter-writing,  the 
newspapers,  and  frequently  a  siesta  —  he,  also, 
was  a  heroic  sleeper,  and  slept  whenever  he  had 
the  chance.  After  tea,  poetry,  or  whatever  else 
his  fancy  chose  —  whatever  work  called  upon 
the  creative  power.  It  is  true  that  he  went  to 


METHODS   OF  AUTHORS.  133 

bed  regularly  at  half-past  ten,  so  that  his  actual 
consumption  of  midnight  oil  was  not  extrava- 
gant. But  such  of  it  as  he  did  consume  served 
as  a  stimulant  for  the  purely  imaginative  part  of 
his  work,  when  the  labor  that  required  no  stimu- 
lant was  over  and  done. 

Blake  was  a  painter  by  day  and  a  poet 
by  night;  he  often  got  out  of  bed  at  mid- 
night and  wrote  for  hours,  following  by 
instinct  the  deliberate  practice  of  less  im- 
pulsive workers. 

Schiller  evolved  his  finest  plays  in  a  summer- 
house,  which  he  built  for  himself,  with  a  single 
chamber,  on  the  top  of  an  acclivity  near  Jena, 
commanding  a  beautiful  prospect  of  the  valley 
of  the  Saal  and  the  fir  mountains  of  the  neigh- 
boring forest.  On  sitting  down  to  his  desk  at 
night,  says  Doring,  he  was  wont  to  keep 
some  strong  coffee  or  wine  chocolate,  but  more 
frequently  a  flask  of  old  Rhenish  or  cham- 
pagne, standing  by  him :  often  the  neighbors 
would  hear  him  earnestly  declaiming  in  the 
silence  of  the  night,  and  he  might  be  seen  walk- 
ing swiftly  to  and  fro  in  his  chamber,  then  sud- 
denly throwing  himself  down  into  his  chair  and 
writing,  drinking  at  intervals  from  the  glass  that 
stood  near  him.  In  winter  he  continued  at  his 
desk  till  four,  or  even  five,  o'clock  in  the  morning ; 
in  summer,  till  toward  three.  The  "pernicious 
expedient  of  stimulants  "  served  only  to  waste 


134  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

the  more  speedily  and  surely,  as  Mr.  Carlyle 
says,  his  already  wasted  fund  of  physical 
strength.  Schiller  used  an  artificial  stimulus 
altogether  peculiar  to  himself :  he  found  it  im- 
possible, according  to  the  well-known  anecdote, 
to  work  except  in  a  room  filled  with  the  scent 
of  rotten  apples,  which  he  kept  in  a  drawer  of 
his  writing-table,  in  order  to  keep  up  his  neces- 
sary mental  atmosphere. 

In  the  park  at  Weimar  we  have  other 
glimpses  of  Schiller ;  frequently  he  was  to  be 
seen  there,  wandering  among  the  groves  and 
remote  avenues,  —  for  he  loved  solitary  walks,  — 
with  a  note-book  in  his  hand;  now  loitering 
along,  now  moving  rapidly  on  ;  "  if  any  one  ap- 
peared in  sight,  he  would  dart  into  another 
alley,  that  his  dream  might  not  be  broken."  In 
Joerden's  Lexicon  we  read  that  whatever 
Schiller  intended  to  write,  he  first  composed  in 
his  head,  before  putting  down  a  line  of  it  on 
paper;  and  he  used  to  call  a  work  "  ready"  so 
soon  as  its  existence  in  his  spirit  was  complete  : 
hence,  there  were  often  reports  current  of  his 
having  finished  such  and  such  a  work,  when,  in 
the  common  sense,  it  was  not  even  begun. 

Lord  Byron  was  a  late  riser.  He  often  saw 
the  sun  rise  before  he  went  to  bed.  In  his 
journals  we  frequently  find  such  entries  as 
these  :  "  Got  up  at  two  P.  M.,  spent  the  morn- 
ing," etc.  He  always  wrote  at  night.  While 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  135 

he  was  the  most  brilliant  star  in  London  society, 
he  was  in  the  habit  of  returning  from  balls, 
routs,  the  theatre,  and  opera,  and  then  writing 
for  two  or  three  hours  before  going  to  bed. 
In  this  way  "The  Corsair,"  "Lara,"  "The 
Giaour,"  and  "The  Siege  of  Corinth"  were 
composed.  Byron  affords  an  illustration  of  a 
tendency  to  put  himself  out  of  working  condi- 
tion in  order  to  work  the  better.  "At  Disdati," 
says  Moore,  "  his  life  was  passed  in  the  same 
regular  round  of  habits  into  which  he  naturally 
fell."  These  habits  included  very  late  hours 
and  semi-starvation,  the  excessive  smoking  of 
cigars  and  chewing  of  tobacco,  and  the  drink- 
ing of  green  tea,  without  milk  or  sugar,  in  the 
evening.  Like  Balzac,  Byron  avoided  meat 
and  wine,  and  so  gave  less  natural  brain-food 
room  for  active  play. 

The  experience  of  P.  K.  Rosegger,  the  great- 
est novelist  of  Styria,  whose  popular  works  are 
read  not  only  in  the  palace,  but  also  in  the  hut, 
is  contrary  to  that  of  most  writers;  he  finds 
that  with  him  lamp-light  and  night-work  are 
most  conducive  to  literary  fertility,  and  that  he 
can  work  with  greater  ease  on  dark,  gloomy 
days  than  in  fine  weather.  His  manuscripts 
are  generally  committed  to  the  press  as  they 
were  originally  composed,  except  for  additions 
that  fill  the  margins  which  the  author  leaves  for 
that  purpose  when  writing.  Poetry  comes  to 


136  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

him  spontaneously  when  he  takes  his  exercise 
in  the  field  or  garden,  so  that  all  he  has  to  do 
when  he  gets  home  is  to  write  it  down ;  but  he 
can  compose  prose  only  at  the  writing-desk. 
After  a  rest  of  several  days  he  writes  with  great 
ease  and  velocity ;  in  fact,  writing  is  a  necessity 
to  him.  On  the  average,  he  writes  three  hours 
a  day.  He  is  often  forced  to  write  while  disin- 
clined, to  provide  for  the  maintenance  of  a 
large  family. 

George  Parsons  Lathrop  thus  speaks  of  the 
habits  of  work  of  Dr.  William  A.  Hammond, 
one  of  the  more  recent  additions  to  our  novel- 
writers  :  "  Dr.  Hammond's  habits  of  work  are 
something  which  should  interest  all  brain 
laborers.  At  a  moderately  early  hour  in  the 
morning  he  seats  himself  in  his  consulting-room 
to  receive  patients,  and  he  remains  indoors  until 
two  in  the  afternoon.  Then  he  drives  out  and 
walks.  On  certain  days  he  has  medical  lec- 
tures to  deliver.  His  spare  time  in  the  after- 
noon is  devoted  to  taking  the  air,  reading,  or 
diverting  himself.  After  dinner  and  any  social 
recreation  that  may  be  in  hand  he  sits  down  at 
his  desk  again  by  ten  or  eleven  o'clock,  and 
writes  until  two  in  the  morning.  '  I  do  it,'  he 
says,  '  because  I  like  it.  It  amuses  and  re- 
freshes me.'  How  he  manages  to  endure  this 
constant  sitting  up  is  something  of  a  marvel, 
considering  that  so  much  of  his  energies  must 


METHODS   OF  AUTHORS.  137 

be  consumed  by  professional  work.  He  seems 
to  be  always  at  leisure  and  unharassed,  and 
lives  comfortably,  not  denying  himself  a  reason- 
able portion  of  stimulants  and  tobacco." 


ix. 

Literary  Partnership. 

Literary  partnerships  are  common  in  France, 
but  in  England  they  are  confined  almost  ex- 
clusively to  dramatists.  The  one  well-known 
exception  was  that  of  Messrs.  Besant  and  Rice. 
Mr.  Rice's  partnership  with  Mr.  Besant  began 
in  1871,  and  ended  with  the  death  of  Mr.  Rice. 
"It  arose,"  explains  Mr.  Besant,  "out  of  some 
slight  articles  which  1  contributed  to  his  maga- 
zine, and  began  with  the  novel  called  '  Ready- 
Money  Mortiboy.'  Of  this  eleven  years'  fellow- 
ship and  intimate,  almost  daily,  intercourse,  I 
can  say  only  that  it  was  carried  on  throughout 
without  a  single  shadow  of  dispute  or  difference. 
James  Rice  was  eminently  a  large-minded  man, 
and  things  which  might  have  proved  great 
rocks  of  offence  to  some,  he  knew  how  to  treat 
as  the  trifles  they  generally  are." 

In  France,  the  best  example  of  literary  part- 
nership is  found  in  that  of  M.  Erckmann  and  M. 
Chatrian.  How  these  men  worked  in  concert 
has  been  described  by  the  author  of  "  Men  of 
the  Third  Republic."  "M.  Chatrian  is  credited 
with  being  the  more  imaginative  of  the  two. 
The  first  outlines  of  the  plots  are  generally  his, 
as  also  the  love  scenes,  and  all  the  descriptions 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  139 

of  Phalsbourg  and  the  country  around.  M. 
Erckmann  puts  in  the  political  reflections,  fur- 
nishes the  soldier  types,  and  elaborates  those 
plain  speeches  which  fit  so  quaintly,  but  well, 
into  the  mouths  of  his  honest  peasants,  ser- 
geants, watchmakers,  and  schoolmasters.  A 
clever  critic  remarked  that  Erckmann-Chat- 
rian's  characters  are  always  hungry  and  eating. 
The  blame,  if  any,  must  lie  on  M.  Chatrian's 
shoulders  ;  to  his  fancy  belong  the  steaming 
tureens  of  soup,  the  dishes  of  browned  saus- 
ages and  sauer-kraut,  and  the  mounds  of 
flowery  potatoes,  bursting  plethorically  through 
their  skins.  All  that  M.  Erckmann  adds  to  the 
mdnu  is  the  black  coffee,  of  which  he  insists, 
with  some  energy,  on  being  a  connoisseur. 
Habitually  the  co-authors  meet  to  sketch  out 
their  plots  and  talk  them  over  amid  much  to- 
bacco smoking.  Then,  when  the  story  has 
taken  clear  shape  in  their  minds,  one  or  the 
other  of  the  pair  writes  the  first  chapter,  leaving 
blanks  for  the  dialogues  or  descriptions  which 
are  best  suited  to  the  competency  of  the  other. 
Every  chapter  thus  passes  through  both 
writers'  hands,  is  revised,  recopied,  and,  as  oc- 
casion requires,  either  shortened  or  lengthened 
in  the  process.  When  the  whole  book  is  writ- 
ten, both  authors  revise  it  again,  and  always 
with  a  view  to  curtailment.  Novelists  who 
dash  off  six  volumes  of  diluted  fiction  in  a  year, 


140  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

and  affect  to  think  naught  of  the  feat,  would 
grow  pensive  at  seeing  the  labor  bestowed  by 
MM.  Erckmann  and  Chatrian  on  the  least  of 
their  works,  as  well  as  their  patient  research  in 
assuring  themselves  that  their  historical  epi- 
sodes are  correct,  and  their  descriptions  of  ex- 
isting localities  true  to  nature.  But  this  care- 
ful industry  will  have  its  reward,  for  the  novels 
of  MM.  Erckmann  and  Chatrian  will  live. 
The  signs  of  vitality  were  discovered  in  them 
as  soon  as  the  two  authors,  nerved  by  their  first 
success,  settled  down  and  produced  one  tale 
after  another,  all  too  slowly  for  the  public  de- 
mand. '  The  Story  of  a  Conscript,'  '  Water- 
loo,' 'The  History  of  a  Man  of  the  People,'  and, 
above  all,  'The  History  of  a  Peasant,'  were 
read  with  wonder  as  well  as  interest." 


X. 
Anonymity  in  Authorship. 

The  question  of  the  authorship  of  certain 
pppular  works  has  given  rise  to  a  great  deal  of 
speculation.  A  few  years  ago,  it  will  be 
remembered,  we  were  puzzling  our  brains  to 
discover  the  name  of  the  author  of  "  The 
Breadwinners."  Among  other  stinging  charges 
against  him,  to  induce  him  to  break  the  silence, 
was  the  fling  that  it  was  a  base  and  craven  thing 
to  publish  a  book  anonymously.  '"  My  motive 
in  withholding  my  name  is  simple  enough," 
said  the  unknown  author  to  his  furious  critics. 
"  I  am  engaged  in  business  in  which  my  stand- 
ing would  be  seriously  compromised  were  it 
known  that  I  had  written  a  novel.  I  am  sure 
that  my  practical  efficiency  is  not  lessened  by 
this  act,  but  I  am  equally  sure  that  I  could 
never  recover  from  the  injury  it  would  occasion 
me  if  known  among  my  own  colleagues.  For 
that  positive  reason,  and  for  the  negative  one 
that  I  do  not  care  for  publicity,  I  resolved  to 
keep  the  knowledge  of  my  little  venture  in 
authorship  restricted  to  as  small  a  circle  as  pos- 
sible. Only  two  persons  besides  myself  know 
who  wrote  '  The  Breadwinners. ' ' 

A  far  more  serious  dispute  followed  the  pub- 


142  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

lication  of  the  "Vestiges  of  Creation,"  forty 
years  ago.  The  theologians  of  Scotland  were 
wild  with  rage  at  the  audacity  of  the  author, 
who  would  have  been  torn  to  pieces  almost 
had  he  been  discovered.  In  scientific  circles 
Robert  Chambers  was  credited  with  the 
authorship;  and  Henri  Gre'ville  seems  to  have 
had  no  doubt  upon  the  matter.  In  "Leaves 
from  the  Diary  of  Henri  Gre'ville  "  there  is  an 
entry  under  the  date  December  28,  1847,  as 
follows :  "  I  have  been  reading  a  novel  called 
'  Jane  Eyre,'  which  is  just  now  making  a  great 
sensation,  and  which  absorbed  and  interested 
me  more  than- any  novel  I  can  recollect  having 
read.  The  author  is  unknown.  Mrs.  Butler,  — 
,  Miss  Fannie  Kemble,  —  who  is  greatly  struck 
by  the  talent  of  the  book,  fancies  it  is  written 
by  Chambers,  who  is  the  author  of  the  '  Vestiges 
of  Creation,'  because  she  thinks  that  whoever 
wrote  it  must,  from  its  language,  be  a  Scotch- 
man, and  from  its  sentiments  be  a  Unitarian ; 
and  Chambers,  besides  answering  to  all  these 
peculiarities,  has  an  intimate  friend  who  believes 
in  supernatural  agencies,  such  as  are  described 
in  the  last  volume  of  the  book."  Thackeray 
also  had  the  credit  of  the  work. 

Nobody  knew  Charlotte  Bronte ;  but  she  was 
unable  to  keep  her  secret  very  long.  The  late 
R.  H.  Home  was  present  at  that  first  dinner 
party  given  by  George  Smith,  the  publisher, 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  143 

when  Currer  Bell,  then  in  the  first  flush  of  her 
fame,  made  her  earliest  appearance  in  a  London 
dining-room.  She  was  anxious  to  preserve  the 
anonymity  of  her  literary  character,  and  was 
introduced  by  her  true  name.  Home,  however, 
who  sat  next  to  her,  was  so  fortunate  as  to 
discover  her  identity.  Just  previously  he  had 
sent  to  the  new  author,  under  cover  of  her 
publisher,  a  copy  of  his  "  Orion."  In  an  un- 
guarded moment,  Charlotte  Bronte  turned  to 
him  and  said  :  — 

"  I  was  so  much  obliged  to  you,  Mr.  Home, 
for  sending  me  your  —  "  But  she  checked  her- 
self with  an  inward  start,  having  thus  betrayed 
her  Currer  Bell  secret,  by  identifying  herself 
with  the  author  of  "Jane  Eyre." 

"Ah,  Miss  Bronte,"  whispered  the  innocent 
cause  of  the  misfortune,  "  you  would  never  do 
for  treasons  and  stratagems  !  " 

The  late  John  Blackwood  corresponded  with 
George  Eliot  for  some  time  before  he  knew 
that  she  was  a  woman.  He  called  her  "  Dear 
George,"  he  says,  and  often  used  expressions 
which  a  man  commonly  uses  only  to  a  man. 
After  he  found  out  who  "  Dear  George  "  was,  he 
was  naturally  a  little  anxious  to  recall  some  of 
the  expressions  he  had  used.  Charles  Dickens, 
however,  detected  what  escaped  the  observation 
of  most  people.  Writing  to  a  correspondent  in 
January,  1858,  he  said:  "Will  you.  by  such 


144  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

roundabout  ways  and  methods  as  may  present 
themselves,  convey  this  note  of  thanks  to  the 
author  of  *  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life,'  whose  two 
first  stories  I  can  never  say  enough  of,  I  think 
them  so  truly  admirable.  But,  if  those  two 
volumes,  or  a  part  of  them,  were  not  written  by 
a  woman,  then  shall  I  begin  to  believe  that  I  am 
a  woman  myself." 


XI. 
System  in  Novel  Writing. 

Anthony  Trollope  was  the  most  systematic  of 
all  the  English  novelists.  Sitting  down  at  his 
desk,  he  would  take  out  his  watch  and  time  him- 
self. His  system  is  well  known,  but  a  singular 
explanation  of  his  fertility  may  be  quoted: 
"When  I  have  commenced  a  new  book,"  he 
says,  "I  have  always  prepared  a  diary  divided 
into  weeks,  and  carried  it  on  for  the  period 
which  I  have  allowed  myself  for  the  completion 
of  the  work.  In  this  I  have  entered  day  by  day 
the  number  of  pages  I  have  written,  so  that  if 
at  any  time  I  have  slipped  into  idleness  for  a 
day  or  two,  the  record  of  that  idleness  has  been 
there  staring  me  in  the  face  and  demanding  of 
me  increased  labor,  so  that  the  deficiency  might 
be  supplied.  According  to  the  circumstances 
of  the  time,  whether  any  other  business  might 
be  then  heavy  or  light,  or  whether  the  book 
which  I  was  writing  was  or  was  not  wanted 
with  speed,  I  have  allotted  myself  so  many 
pages  a  week.  The  average  number  has  been 
about  forty.  It  has  been  placed  as  low  as 
twenty  and  has  risen  to  one  hundred  and 
twelve.  And  as  a  page  is  an  ambiguous  term, 
my  page  has  been  made  to  contain  two  hundred 


146  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

and  fifty  words,  and  as  words,  if  not  watched, 
will  have  a  tendency  to  straggle,  I  have  had 
every  word  counted  as  I  went." 

Under  the  title  of  "A  Walk  in  a  Wood," 
Anthony  Trollope  thus  describes  his  method  of 
plot-making  and  the  difficulty  the  novelist  ex- 
periences in  making  the  "tricksy  Ariel"  of  the 
imagination  do  his  bidding :  "  I  have  to  confess 
that  my  incidents  are  fabricated  to  fit  my  story 
as  it  goes  on,  and  not  my  story  to  fit  my  inci- 
dents. I  wrote  a  novel  once  in  which  a  lady 
forged  a  will,  but  I  had  not  myself  decided  that 
she  had  forged  it  till  the  chapter  before  that  in 
which  she  confesses  her  guilt.  In  another  a 
lady  is  made  to  steal  her  own  diamonds,  a 
grand  tour  de  force,  as  I  thought ;  but  the  bril- 
liant idea  struck  me  only  when  I  was  writing 
the  page  in  which  the  theft  is  described.  I 
once  heard  an  unknown  critic  abuse  my  work- 
manship because  a  certain  lady  had  been  made 
to  appear  too  frequently  in  my  pages.  I  went 
home  and  killed  her  immediately.  I  say  this  to 
show  that  the  process  of  thinking  to  which  I 
am  alluding  has  not  generally  been  applied  to 
any  great  effort  of  construction.  It  has  ex- 
pended itself  on  the  minute  ramifications  of  tale- 
telling:  how  this  young  lady  should  be  made  to 
behave  herself  with  that  young  gentleman;  how 
this  mother  or  that  father  would  be  affected  by 
the  ill  conduct  or  the  good  of  a  son  or  a  daughter  ; 


METHODS    OF   AUTHORS.  147 

how  these  words  or  those  other  would  be  most 
appropriate  or  true  to  nature  if  used  on  some 
special  occasion.  Such  plottings  as  these  with 
a  fabricator  of  fiction  are  infinite  in  number, 
but  not  one  of  them  can  be  done  fitly  without 
thinking.  My  little  effort  will  miss  its  wished- 
for  result  unless  I  be  true  to  nature ;  and  to  be 
true  to  nature  I  must  think  what  nature  would 
produce.  Where  shall  I  go  to  find  my  thoughts 
with  the  greatest  ease  and  most  perfect  freedom  ? 
"  I  have  found  that  I  can  best  command  my 
thoughts  on  foot,  and  can  do  so  with  the  most 
perfect  mastery  when  wandering  through  a  wood. 
To  be  alone  is,  of  course,  essential.  Companion- 
ship requires  conversation,  for  which,  indeed, 
the  spot  is  most  fit ;  but  conversation  is  not  now 
the  object  in  view.  I  have  found  it  best  even  to 
reject  the  society  of  a  dog,  who,  if  he  be  a  dog 
of  manners,  will  make  some  attempt  at  talking ; 
and  though  he  should  be  silent,  the  sight  of  him 
provokes  words  and  caresses  and  sport.  It 
is  best  to  be  away  from  cottages,  away  from 
children,  away  as  far  as  may  be  from  chance 
wanderers.  So  much  easier  is  it  to  speak  than 
to  think,  that  any  slightest  temptation  suffices  to 
carry  away  the  idler  from  the  harder  to  the 
lighter  work.  An  old  woman  with  a  bundle  of 
sticks  becomes  an  agreeable  companion,  or  a 
little  girl  picking  wild  fruit.  Even  when  quite 
alone,  when  all  the  surroundings  seem  to  be 


148  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

fitted  for  thought,  the  thinker  will  still  find  a 
difficulty  in  thinking.  It  is  not  that  the  mind 
is  inactive,  but  that  it  will  run  exactly  whither 
it  is  not  bidden  to  go.  With  subtle  ingenuity, 
it  will  find  for  itself  little  easy  tasks,  instead  of 
setting  itself  down  on  that  which  it  is  its  duty 
to  do  at  once.  With  me,  I  own,  it  is  so  weak  as 
to  fly  back  to  things  already  done,  which  re- 
quire no  more  thinking,  which  are,  perhaps,  un- 
worthy of  a  place  even  in  the  memory,  and  to 
revel  in  the  ease  of  contemplating  that  which 
has  been  accomplished,  rather  than  to  struggle 
for  further  performance.  My  eyes,  which 
should  become  moist  with  the  troubles  of  the 
embryo  heroine,  shed  tears  as  they  call  to  mind 

the  early  sorrow  of  Mr. ,  who  was  married 

and  made  happy  many  years  ago.  Then,  when 
it  comes  to  this,  a  great  effort  becomes  neces- 
sary, or  that  day  will  for  me  have  no  results. 
It  is  so  easy  to  lose  an  hour  in  maundering  over 
the  past,  and  to  waste  the  good  things  which 
have  been  provided  in  remembering  instead  of 
creating ! 

"  But  a  word  about  the  nature  of  the  wood ! 
It  is  not  always  easy  to  find  a  wood,  and  some- 
times when  you  have  got  it,  it  is  but  a  muddy  ? 
plashy,  rough-hewn  congregation  of  ill-grown 
trees, — a  thicket  rather  than  a  wood,  —  in 
which  even  contemplation  is  difficult,  and  think- 
ing is  out  of  the  question.  He  who  has  devoted 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  1 49 

himself  to  wandering  in  woods  will  know  at  the 
first  glance  whether  the  place  will  suit  his  pur- 
pose. A  crowded  undergrowth  of  hazel,  thorn, 
birch,  and  elder,  with  merely  a  track  through  it, 
will  by  no  means  serve  the  occasion.  The  trees 
around  you  should  be  big  and  noble.  There 
should  be  grass  at  your  feet.  There  should  be 
space  for  the  felled  or  fallen  princes  of  the 
forest.  A  roadway  with  the  sign  of  wheels 
that  have  passed  long  since  will  be  an  advan- 
tage, so  long  as  the  branches  above  your  head 
shall  meet  or  seem  to  meet  each  other.  I  will 
not  say  that  the  ground  should  not  be  level,  lest 
by  creating  difficulties  I  shall  seem  to  show 
that  the  fitting  spot  may  be  too  difficult  to  be 
found ;  but,  no  doubt,  it  will  be  an  assistance  in 
the  work  to  be  done  if  occasionally  you  can 
look  down  on  the  tops  of  the  trees  as  you  de- 
scend, and  again  look  up  to  them  as  with  in- 
creasing height  they  rise  high  above  your  head. 
And  it  should  be  a  wood  —  perhaps  a  forest  — 
rather  than  a  skirting  of  timber.  You  should 
feel  that,  if  not  lost,  you  are  losable.  To  have 
trees  around  you  is  not  enough,  unless  you  have 
many.  You  must  have  a  feeling  as  of  Adam  in 
the  garden.  There  must  be  a  confirmed  assur- 
ance in  your  mind  that  you  have  got  out  of  the 
conventional  into  the  natural,  which  will  not 
establish  itself  unless  there  be  a  consciousness 
of  distance  between  you  and  the  next  ploughed 


150  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

field.  If  possible,  you  should  not  know  the 
east  from  the  west ;  or,  if  so,  only  by  the  set- 
ting of  the  sun.  You  should  recognize  the  di- 
rection in  which  you  must  return  simply  by  the 
fall  of  water. 

"  But  where  shall  the  wood  be  found  ?  Such 
woodlands  there  are  still  in  England,  though, 
alas !  they  are  becoming  rarer  every  year. 
Profit  from  the  timber  merchant  or  dealer  in 
fire-wood  is  looked  to ;  or  else,  as  is  more 
probable,  drives  are  cut  broad  and  straight,  like 
spokes  of  a  wheel  radiating  to  a  nave  or  centre, 
good  only  for  the  purposes  of  the  slayer  of 
multitudinous  pheasants.  I  will  not  say  that  a 
wood  prepared,  not  as  the  home,  but  the 
slaughter-ground,  of  game,  is  altogether  ineffi- 
cient for  our  purpose.  I  have  used  such,  even 
when  the  sound  of  the  guns  has  been  near 
enough  to  warn  me  to  turn  my  steps  to  the 
right  or  to  the  left.  The  scents  are  pleasant 
even  in  winter ;  the  trees  are  there,  and  some- 
times even  yet  the  delightful  feeling  may  be 
encountered  that  the  track  on  which  you  are 
walking  leads  to  some  far-off,  vague  destination, 
in  reaching  which  there  maybe  much  of  de- 
light, because  it  will  be  new  ;  —  something  also 
of  peril,  because  it  will  be  distant.  But  the 
wood,  if  possible,  should  seem  to  be  purpose- 
less. It  should  have  no  evident  consciousness 
of  being  there,  either  for  game  or  fagots.  The 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  151 

felled  trunk  on  which  you  sit  should  seem  to 
have  been  selected  for  some  accidental  purpose 
of  house-building,  as  if  a  neighbor  had 
searched  for  what  was  wanting  and  had  found 
it.  No  idea  should  be  engendered  that  it  was 
let  out  at  so  much  an  acre  to  a  contractor,  who 
would  cut  the  trees  in  order  and  sell  them  in 
the  next  market.  The  mind  should  conceive 
that  this  wood  never  had  been  planted  by  hands, 
but  had  come  there  from  the  direct  beneficence 
of  the  Creator — as  the  first  woods  did  come, 
before  man  had  been  taught  to  recreate  them 
systematically,  and  as  some  still  remain  to  us, 
so  much  more  lovely  in  their  wildness  than  when 
reduced  to  rows  and  quincunxes,  and  made  to 
accommodate  themselves  to  laws  of  economy 
and  order. 

"  They  will  not  come  at  once,  those  thoughts 
which  are  so  anxiously  expected ;  and  in  the 
process  of  coming  they  are  apt  to  be  trouble- 
some, full  of  tricks,  and  almost  traitorous. . 
They  must  be  imprisoned  or  bound  with 
thongs  when  they  come,  as  was  Proteus  when 
Ulysses  caught  him  amidst  his  sea-calves, — as 
was  done  with  some  of  the  fairies  of  old,  who 
would,  indeed,  do  their  beneficent  work,  but 
only  under  compulsion.  It  may  be  that  your 
spirit  should  on  an  occasion  be  as  obedient  as 
Ariel ;  but  that  will  not  be  often.  He  will  run 
backward, — as  it  were  downhill,  —  because  it  is 


152  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

so  easy,  instead  of  upward  and  onward.  He  will 
turn  to  the  right  and  to  the  left,  making  a  show 
of  doing  fine  work,  only  not  the  work  that  is 
demanded  of  him  that  day.  He  will  skip 
hither  and  thither  with  pleasant,  bright  gambols, 
but  will  not  put  his  shoulder  to  the  wheel,  his 
neck  to  the  collar,  his  hand  to  the  plough.  Has 
my  reader  ever  driven  a  pig  to  market  ?  The 
pig  will  travel  on  freely,  but  will  always  take 
the  wrong  turning ;  and  then,  when  stopped  for 
the  tenth  time,  will  head  backward  and  try  to 
run  between  your  legs  So  it  is  with  the 
tricksy  Ariel, —  that  Ariel  which  every  man  owns, 
though  so  many  of  us  fail  to  use  him  for  much 
purpose ;  which  but  few  of  us  have  subjected 
to  such  discipline  as  Prospero  had  used  before 
he  had  brought  his  servant  to  do  his  bidding  at 
the  slightest  word. 

"But  at  last  I  feel  that  I  have  him,  perhaps 
by  the  tail,  as  the  Irishman  drives  his  pig. 
When  I  have  got  him  I  have  to  be  careful  that 
he  shall  not  escape  me  till  that  job  of  work  be 
done.  Gradually,  as  I  walk  or  stop,  as  I  seat 
myself  on  a  bank  or  lean  against  a  tree,  perhaps 
as  I  hurry  on  waving  my  stick  above  my  head, 
till,  with  my  quick  motion,  the  sweatdrops  come 
out  upon  my  brow,  the  scene  forms  itself  for 
me.  I  see,  or  fancy  that  I  see,  what  will  be  fit- 
ting, what  will  be  true,  how  far  virtue  may  be 
made  to  go  without  walking  upon  stilts,  what 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  153 

wickedness  may  do  without  breaking  the  link 
which  binds  it  to  humanity,  how  low  ignorance 
may  grovel,  how  high  knowledge  may  soar,  what 
the  writer  may  teach  without  repelling  by 
severity,  how  he  may  amuse  without  descending 
to  buffoonery;  and  then  the  limits  of  pathos  are 
searched  and  words  are  weighed  which  shall  suit, 
but  do  no  more  than  suit,  the  greatness  or  the 
smallness  of  the  occasion.  We,  who  are  slight, 
may  not  attempt  lofty  things,  or  make  ridicu- 
lous with  our  little  fables  the  doings  of  the  gods. 
But  for  that  which  we  do  there  are  appropriate 
terms  and  boundaries  which  may  be  reached, 
but  not  surpassed.  All  this  has  to  be  thought 
of  and  decided  upon  in  reference  to  those  little 
plottings  of  which  I  have  spoken,  each  of  which 
has  to  be  made  the  receptacle  of  pathos  or  of 
humor,  of  honor  or  of  truth,  as  far  as  the  thinker 
may  be  able  to  furnish  them.  He  has  to  see, 
above  all  things,  that  in  his  attempts  he  shall 
not  sin  against  nature ;  that  in  striving  to  touch 
the  feelings  he  shall  not  excite  ridicule ;  that  in 
seeking  for  humor  he  does  not  miss  his  point ; 
that  in  quest  of  honor  and  truth  he  does  not 
become  bombastic  and  straitlaced.  A  cler- 
gyman in  his  pulpit  may  advocate  an  altitude  of 
virtue  fitted  to  a  millennium  here  or  to  a  heaven 
hereafter ;  nay,  from  the  nature  of  his  profes- 
sion, he  must  do  so.  The  poet,  too,  may  soar 
as  high  as  he  will,  and  if  words  suffice  to  him, 


154  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

he  need  never  fear  to  fail  because  his  ideas  are 
too  lofty.  But  he  who  tells  tales  in  prose  can 
hardly  hope  to  be  effective  as  a  teacher,  unless 
he  binds  himself  by  the  circumstances  of  the 
world  which  he  finds  around  him.  Honor  and 
truth  there  should  be,  and  pathos  and  humor, 
but  he  should  so  constrain  them  that  they  shall 
not  seem  to  mount  into  nature  beyond  the  ordi- 
nary habitations  of  men  and  women. 

"  Such  rules  as  to  construction  have  probably 
been  long  known  to  him.  It  is  not  for  them  he 
is  seeking  as  he  is  roaming  listlessly  or  walking 
rapidly  through  the  trees.  They  have  come  to 
him  from  much  observation,  from  the  writings 
of  others,  from  that  which  we  call  study,  in 
which  imagination  has  but  little  immediate 
concern.  It  is  the  fitting  of  the  rules  to  the 
characters  which  he  has  created,  the  filling  in 
with  living  touches  and  true  colors  those  daubs 
and  blotches  on  his  canvas  which  have  been 
easily  scribbled  with  a  rough  hand,  that  the 
true  work  consists.  It  is  here  that  he  requires 
that  his  fancy  should  be  undisturbed,  that  the 
trees  should  overshadow  him,  that  the  birds 
should  comfort  him,  that  the  green  and  yellow 
mosses  should  be  in  unison  with  him,  that  the 
very  air  should  be  good  to  him.  The  rules  are 
there  fixed,—  fixed  as  far  as  his  judgment  can 
fix  them, —  and  are  no  longer  a  difficulty  to  him. 
The  first  coarse  outlines  of  his  story  he  has 


METHODS   OF  AUTHORS.  155 

found  to  be  a  matter  almost  indifferent  to  him. 
It  is  with  these  little  plottings  that  he  has  to  con- 
tend. It  is  for  them  that  he  must  catch  his 
Ariel  and  bind  him  fast,  but  yet  so  bind  him 
that  not  a  thread  shall  touch  the  easy  action  of 
his  wings.  Every  little  scene  must  be  arranged 
so  that  —  if  it  may  be  possible  —  the  proper 
words  may  be  spoken  and  the  fitting  effect  pro- 
duced. 

"  Alas  !  with  all  these  struggles,  when  the 
wood  has  been  found,  when  all  external  things 
are  propitious,  when  the  very  heavens  have 
lent  their  aid,  it  is  so  often  that  it  is  impossible  ! 
It  is  not  only  that  your  Ariel  is  untrained,  but 
that  the  special  Ariel  which  you  may  chance  to 
own  is  no  better  than  a  rustic  hobgoblin  or  a 
pease-blossom,  or  mustard  seed  at  the  best. 
You  cannot  get  the  pace  of  the  racehorse  from 
a  farmyard  colt,  train  him  as  you  will.  How 
often  is  one  prompted  to  fling  one's  self  down 
in  despair,  and,  weeping  between  the  branches, 
to  declare  that  it  is  not  that  the  thoughts  will 
wander,  it  is  not  that  the  mind  is  treacherous  ! 
That  which  it  can  do,  it  will  do ;  but  the  pace 
required  from  it  should  be  fitted  only  for  the 
farmyard.  Nevertheless,  before  all  be  given 
up,  let  a  walk  in  the  wood  be  tried." 

Much  has  been  said  about  the  quality  of  Mr. 
Trollope's  work.  There  seems  a  consensus 
of  opinion  that  it  degenerated.  "  Mr.  Trol- 


156  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

lope,"  says  Mr.  Freeman,  "  had  certainly  gone 
far  to  write  himself  out.  His  later  work  is  far 
from  being  so  good  as  his  earlier.  But,  after 
all,  his  worst  work  is  better  than  a  great  many 
other  people's  best ;  and  considering  the  way 
in  which  it  was  done,  it  is  wonderful  that  it  was 
done  at  all.  I,  myself,  know  what  fixed  hours 
of  work  are,  and  their  value ;  but  I  could  not 
undertake  to  write  about  William  Rufus  or 
Appius  Claudius  up  to  a  certain  moment  on  the 
clock,  and  to  stop  at  that  moment.  I  suppose 
it  was  from  his  habits  of  official  business  that  Mr. 
Trollope  learned  to  do  it,  and  every  man  un- 
doubtedly knows  best  how  to  do  his  own  work. 
Still,  it  is  strange  that  works  of  imagination  did 
not  suffer  by  such  a  way  of  doing." 

James  Payn  said  that  Trollope  injured  his  repu- 
tation by  publishing  his  methods  of  writing.  Like- 
wise, the  Daily  News,  in  referring  to  Alphonse 
Daudet's  history  of  his  own  novels,  doubted 
whether  he  acted  wisely.  As  the  editor  said, 
"  An  effect  of  almost  too  elaborate  art,  a  feeling 
that  we  are  looking  at  a  mosaic  painfully  made 
up  of  little  pieces  picked  out  of  real  life  and 
fitted  together,  has  often  been  present  to  the 
consciousness  of  M.  Daudet's  readers.  That 
feeling  is  justified  by  his  description  of  his 
creative  efforts." 

M.  Daudet's  earlier  works  were  light  and 
humorous,  like  "  Tartarin,"  or  they  were  idyllic 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  157 

and  full  of  Provengal  scenery,  the  nature  and 
the  nightingales  of  M.  Daudet's  birthplace,  the 
south.  One  night  at  the  theatre,  when  watch- 
ing the  splendid  failure  of  an  idyllic  Provencal 
sort  of  play,  M.  Daudet  made  up  his  mind  that 
he  must  give  the  public  sterner  stuff,  and  de- 
scribe the  familiar  Parisian  scenery  of  streets 
and  quais.  This  wise  determination  was  the 
origin  of  his  novels,  "  Jack,"  "  Fromont  jeune 
et  Risler  aine,"  and  the  rest.  Up  to  that 
time,  M.  Daudet,  M.  Zola,  M.  Flaubert,  and 
the  brothers  Goncourt  had  all  been  more  or 
less  unpopular  authors.  It  is  not  long  since 
they  had  a  little  club  of  the  unsuccessful,  arid 
M.  Daudet  was  the  first  of  the  company  who 
began  to  blossom  out  into  numerous  editions. 

M.  Daudet's  secret  as  a  novelist,  as  far  as 
the  secret  is  communicable,  seems  to  be  his 
wonderfully  close  study  of  actual  life  and  his 
uhscrupulousness  in  .reproducing  its  details 
almost  without  disguise.  He  frankly  confesses 
that  not  only  the  characters  in  his  political 
novels,  but  those  in  his  other  works,  are  drawn 
straight  from  living  persons.  The  scenery  is 
all  sketched  from  nature,  M.  Daudet  describing 
the  vast  factories  with  which  he  was  familiar 
when,  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  he  began  to  earn 
his  own  living,  or  the  interiors  to  which  he  was 
admitted  by  virtue  of  his  position  under  a  great 
man  of  the  late  imperial  administration.  Places 


158  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

about  which  he  did  not  know  much,  and  which 
needed  to  be  introduced  into  his  tales,  M. 
Daudet  visited  with  his  note-book. 

M.  Daudet's  mode  of  work  is,  first,  to  see  his 
plot  and  main  incidents  clearly,  to  arrive  at  a 
full  understanding  of  his  characters,  then  to  map 
out  his  chapters,  and  then,  he  says,  his  fingers 
tingle  to  be  at  work.  He  writes  rapidly,  hand- 
ing each  wet  slip  of  paper  to  Madame  Daudet 
for  criticism  and  approval.  There  is  no  such 
sound  criticism,  he  says,  as  that  of  this  helpful 
collaborator,  who  withal  is  "so  little  a  woman  of 
letters." 

When  a  number  of  chapters  are  finished  M. 
Daudet  finds  it  well  to  begin  publishing  his 
novel  in  a  journal.  Thus  he  is  obliged  to  finish 
within  a  certain  date;  he  cannot  go  back  to 
make  alterations  ;  he  cannot  afford  time  to  write 
a  page  a  dozen  times  over,  as  a  conscientious 
artist  often  wishes  to  do. 


XII. 
Traits  of  Musical  Composers. 

A  long  chapter  of  instances  might  be  penned 
on  the  habits  of  work  of  musical  composers ; 
such  as  Gluck's  habit  of  betaking  himself  with 
his  harpsichord  on  a  fine  day  into  some  grassy 
field,  wbere  the  ideas  came  to  him  as  fast 
again  as  within  doors. 

Handel,  on  the  contrary,  claims  to  have  been 
inspired  for  his  grandest  compositions  by  the 
murmurous  din  of  mighty  London,  —  far  from 
mighty  as  the  London  of  George  the  Second 
may  seem  to  those  with  whom  the  nineteenth 
century  is  waning. 

Sarti  composed  best  in  the  sombre  shadows 
of  a  dimly-lighted  room. 

The  Monsieur  Le  Maitre  commemorated  in 
Rousseau's  autobiography  typified  a  numerous 
section  in  his  constant  recourse,  en  travail- 
lant  dans  son  cabinet,  to  a  bottle,  which  was 
replenished  as  often  as  emptied,  and  that  was 
too  often  by  a  great  deal.  His  servant,  in  pre- 
paring the  room  for  him,  would  no  more  have 
thought  of  omitting  son  pot  et  son  verre  than 
his  ruled  paper,  ink,  pens,  and  violoncello; 
and  one  serving  did  for  these,  —  not  so  for 
the  drink. 


l6o  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

The  learned  artist  Haydn  could  not  work 
except  in  court-dress,  and  used  to  declare  that, 
if,  when  he  sat  down  to  his  instrument,  he  had 
forgotten  to  put  on  a  certain  ring,  he  could  not 
summon  a  single  idea.  How  he  managed  to 
summon  ideas  before  Frederick  II.  had  given 
him  the  said  ring  we  are  not  informed. 

Charles  Dibdin's  method  of  composition,  or, 
rather,  the  absence  of  it,  is  illustrated  in  the 
story  of  his  lamenting  his  lack  of  a  new  subject 
while  under  the  hair-dresser's  hand  in  a  cloud 
of  powder,  at  his  rooms  in  the  Strand,  preparing 
for  his  night's  "entertainment."  The  friend 
who  was  with  him  suggested  various  topics, 
but  all  of  a  sudden  the  jar  of  a  ladder  sounded 
against  the  lamp-iron,  and  Dibdin  exclaimed, 
"  The  lamp-lighter,  a  good  notion,"  and  at  once 
began  humming  and  fingering  on  his  knee.  As 
soon  as  his  head  was  dressed  he  stepped  to  the 
piano,  finished  off  both  music  and  words,  and 
that  very  night  sang  "  Jolly  Dick,  the  Lamp- 
lighter," at  the  theatre,  nor  could  he,  we  are 
assured  on  critical  authority,  well  have  made 
a  greater  hit  if  the  song  had  been  the  delibe- 
rate work  of  two  authors  —  one  of  the  words, 
another  of  the  air  —  and  had  taken  weeks  to 
finish  it,  and  been  elaborated  in  studious  leisure 
instead  of  the  distraction  of  dressing-room  din. 


XIII. 
The  Hygiene  of  Writing. 

Edward  Everett  Hale  gives  the  following  de- 
scription of  his  mode  of  life,  which  at  the 
same  time  is  full  of  advice  to  authors  in  gen- 
eral :  — 

"  The  business  of  health  for  a  literary  man 
seems  to  me  to  depend  largely  upon  sleep.  He 
should  have  enough  sleep,  and  should  sleep 
well.  He  should  avoid  whatever  injures  sleep. 

"  This  means  that  the  brain  should  not  be 
excited  or  even  worked  hard  for  six  hours 
before  bedtime.  Young  men  can  disregard 
this  rule,  and  do ;  but  as  one  grows  older  he 
finds  it  wiser  to  throw  his  work  upon  morning 
hours.  If  he  can  spend  the  afternoon,  or  even 
the  evening,  in  the  open  air,  his  chances  of  sleep 
are  better.  The  evening  occupation,  according 
to  me,  should  be  light  and  pleasant,  as  music,  a 
novel,  reading  aloud,  conversation,  the  theatre, 
or  watching  the  stars  from  the  piazza.  Of 
course,  different  men  make  and  need  different 
rules.  I  take  nine  hours  for  sleep  in  every 
twenty-four,  and  do  not  object  to  ten. 

"  I  accepted  very  early  in  life  Bulwer's  esti- 
mate that  three  hours  a  day  is  as  large  an  aver- 
age of  desk  work  as  a  man  of  letters  should  try 


1 62  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

for.  I  have,  in  old  newspaper  days,  written  for 
twelve  consecutive  hours;  but  this  is  only  a 
tour  de  force,  and  in  the  long  run  you  waste 
strength  if  you  do  not  hold  every  day  quite 
closely  to  the  average. 

"  As  men  live,  with  the  telegraph  and  the 
telephone  interrupting  when  they  choose,  and 
this  fool  and  that  coming  in  when  they  choose 
to  say,  '  I  do  not  want  to  interrupt  you  ;  I  will 
only  take  a  moment,'  the  great  difficulty  is  to 
hold  your  three  hours  without  a  break.  If  a 
man  has  broken  my  mirror,  I  do  not  thank  him 
for  leaving  the  pieces  next  each  other ;  he  has 
spoiled  it,  and  he  may  carry  them  ten  miles 
apart  if  he  chooses.  So,  if  a  fool  comes  in  and 
breaks  my  time  in  two,  he  may  stay  if  he  wants 
to ;  he  is  none  the  less  a  fool.  What  I  want 
for  work  is  unbroken  time.  This  is  best  se- 
cured early  in  the  morning. 

"  I  dislike  early  rising  as  much  as  any  man, 
nor  do  I  believe  there  is  any  moral  merit  in  it, 
as  the  children's  books  pretend ;  but  to  secure 
an  unbroken  hour,  or  even  less,  I  like  to  be  at 
my  desk  before  breakfast.  As  long  before  as 
possible  I  have  a  cup  of  coffee  and  a  soda  bis 
cuit  brought  me  there,  and  in  the  thirty  to  sixty 
minutes  which  follow  before  breakfast,  I  like  to 
start  the  work  of  the  day.  If  you  rise  at  a 
quarter  past  six,  there  will  be  comparatively  few 
map  pedlers,  or  book  agents,  or  secretaries  of 


METHODS   OF  AUTHORS.  163 

charities,  or  jailbirds,  who  will  call  before 
eight.  The  hour  from  6.30  to  7.30  is  that 
of  which  you  are  most  sure.  Even  the  mother- 
in-law  or  the  mother  of  your  wife's  sister's  hus- 
band does  not  come  then  to  say  that  she  should 
like  some  light  work  with  a  large  salary  as 
matron  in  an  institution  where  there  is  nothing 
to  do. 

il  I  believe  in  breakfast  very  thoroughly,  and 
in  having  a  good  breakfast.  I  have  lived  in- 
Paris  a  month  at  a  time  and  detest  the  French 
practice  of  substituting  for  breakfast  a  cup  of 
coffee,  with  or  without  an  egg.  Breakfast  is  a 
meal  at  which  much  time  may  be  spent  with 
great  advantage.  People  are  not  apt  to  come 
to  it  too  regularly,  and  you  may  profit  by  the 
intermission  to  read  your  newspaper  and  lecture 
on  its  contents.  There's  no  harm  in  spending 
an  hour  at  the  table. 

"  After  breakfast  do  not  go  to  work  for  an 
hour.  Walk  out  in  the  garden,  lie  on  your  back 
on  a  sofa  and  read,  in  general,  'loaf  for  that 
hour,  and  bid  the  servant  keep  out  everybody 
who  rings  the  bell,  and  work  steadily  till  your 
day's  stint  is  done.  If  you  have  had  half  .an 
hour  before  breakfast,  you  can  make  two  hours 
and  a  half  now. 

"  It  is  just  so  much  help  if  you  have  a  good 
amanuensis ;  none,  if  you  have  a  poor  one.  The 
amanuensis  should  have  enough  else  to  do,  but 


164  METHODS    OF   AUTHORS. 

be  at  liberty  to  attend  to  you  when  you  need. 
Write  as  long  as  you  feel  like  writing ;  the 
moment  you  do  not  feel  like  it,  give  him  the  pen 
and  walk  up  and  down  the  room  dictating. 
There  are  those  who  say  that  they  can  tell  the  dif- 
ference between  dictated  work  and  work  written 
by  the  author.  I  do  not  believe  them.  I  will 
give  a  share  in  the  Combination  Protoxide  Sil- 
ver Mine  of  Grey's  Gulch  to  anybody  who  will 
divide  this  article  correctly  between  the  parts 
which  I  dictated  and  those  which  are  written 
with  my  own  red  right  hand. 

"Stick  to  your  stint  till  it  is  done.  If  Philis- 
tines come  in,  as  they  will  in  a  finite  world,  deduct 
the  time  which  they  have  stolen  from  you  and 
go  on  so  much  longer  with  your  work  till  you 
have  done  what  you  set  out  to  do. 

"When  you  have  finished  the  stint,  stop.  Do 
not  be  tempted  to  go  on  because  you  are  in 
good  spirits  for  work.  There  is  no  use  in  mak- 
ing ready  to  be  tired  to-morrow.  You  may  go 
out  of  doors  now,  you  may  read,  you  may  in 
whatever  way  get  light  and  life  for  the  next 
day.  Indeed,  if  you  will  remember  that  the 
first  necessity  for  literary  work  is  that  you  have 
something  ready  to  say  before  you  begin,  you 
will  remember  something  which  most  authors 
have  thoroughly  forgotten  or  never  knew. 

"This  business  of  writing  is  the  most  ex- 
hausting known  to  men.  You  should,  therefore. 


METHODS   OF   AUTHORS.  165 

steadily  feed  the  machine  with  fuel.  I  find  it  a 
good  habit  to  have  standing  on  the  stove  a  cup 
of  warm  milk,  just  tinged  in  color  with  roffee. 
In  the  days  of  my  buoyant  youth  I  said,  'of  the 
color  of  the  cheek  of  a  brunette  in  Seville.'  I 
had  then  never  seen  a  brunette  in  Seville;  but 
I  have  since,  and  I  can  testify  that  the  descrip- 
tion was  good.  Beef  tea  answers  as  well;  a 
bowl  of  chowder  quite  as  well  as  either.  In- 
deed, good  clam  chowder  is  probably  the  form 
of  nourishment  which  most  quickly  and  easily 
comes  to  the  restoration  or  refreshment  of  the 
brain  of  man. 

"  If  this  bowl  of  coffee,  or  chowder,  or  soup 
is  counted  as  one  meal,  the  working  man  who 
wishes  to  keep  in  order  will  have  five  meals  a 
day,  besides  the  morning  cup  of  coffee,  or  of 
coffee  colored  with  milk,  which  he  has  before 
breakfast.  Breakfast  is  one ;  this  extended 
lunch  is  another ;  dinner  is  the  third,  say  at 
half-past  two  ;  tea  is  the  fourth,  at  six  or  seven ; 
and,  what  is  too  apt  to  be  forgotten,  a  sufficient 
supper  before  bedtime  is  the  fifth.  This  last 
may  be  as  light  as  you  please,  but  let  it  be  suffi- 
cient, —  a  few  oysters,  a  slice  of  hot  toast,  clam 
chowder  again,  or  a  bowl  of  soup.  Never  go  to 
bed  in  any  danger  of  being  hungry.  People  are 
kept  awake  by  hunger  quite  as  much  as  by  a 
bad  conscience. 

"  Remembering  that   sleep  is    the   essential 


166  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

force  with  which  the  whole  scheme  starts,  de- 
cline tea  or  coffee  within  the  last  six  hours 
before  going  to  bed.  If  the  women-kind  insist, 
you  may  have  your  milk  and  water  at  the  tea- 
table,  colored  with  tea ;  but  the  less  the  better. 

"  Avoid  all  mathematics  or  intricate  study  of 
any  sort  in  the  last  six  hours.  This  is  the  stuff 
dreams  are  made  of,  and  hot  heads,  and  the 
nuisances  of  waking  hours. 

"  Keep  your  conscience  clear.  Remember 
that  because  the  work  of  life  is  infinite  you 
cannot  do  the  whole  of  it  in  any  limited  period 
of  time,  and  that,  therefore,  you  may  just  as 
well  leave  off  in  one  place  as  another. 

"  No  work  of  any  kind  should  be  done  in  the 
hour  after  dinner.  After  any  substantial  meal, 
.observe,  you  need  all  your  vital  force  for  the 
beginning  of  digestion.  For  my  part,  I  always 
go  to  sleep  after  dinner  and  sleep  for  exactly  an 
hour,  if  people  will  only  stay  away ;  and  I  am 
much  more  fond  of  the  people  who  keep  away 
from  me  at  that  time  than  I  am  of  the  people 
who  visit  me. " 


XIV. 
A  Humorist's  Regimen. 

Robert  Barr  ( whose  pseudonym,  "  Luke 
Sharp,"  is  familiar  to  the  readers  of  the  De- 
troit Free  Press}  has  written  an  article  on 
"How  a  Literary  Man  Should  Live,"  which 
may  be  cited  in  conclusion  :  — 

"  I  am  not,"  he  says,  "  an  advocate  of  early 
rising.  I  believe,  however,  that  every  literary 
man  should  have  fixed  hours  for  getting  up. 
I  am  very  firm  with  myself  on  that  score.  I 
make  it  a  rule  to  rise  every  morning  in  winter 
between  the  hours  of  six  and  eleven,  and  in 
summer  from  half-past  five  until  ten.  A  person 
is  often  tempted  to  sleep  later  than  the  limit  I 
tie  myself  to,  but  a  little  resolution  with  a  per- 
son's self  at  first  will  be  amply  repaid  by  the 
time  thus  gained,  and  the  feeling  one  has  of 
having  conquered  a  tendency  to  indolence.  I 
believe  that  a  literary  man  can  get  all  the  sleep 
he  needs  between  eight  o'clock  at  night  and 
eleven  in  the  morning.  I  know,  of  course,  that 
some  eminent  authorities  disagree  with  me,  but 
I  am  only  stating  my  own  experience  in  the 
matter,  and  don't  propose  to  enter  into  any 
controversy  about  it. 

"On  rising  I    avoid  all  stimulating  drinks, 


1 68  METHODS   OF   AUTHORS. 

such  as  tea  or  coffee.  They  are  apt  to  set  the 
brain  working,  and  I  object  to  work,  even  in  its 
most  disguised  forms.  A  simple  glass  of  hot 
Scotch,  say  half  a  pint  or  so,  serves  to  tide  over 
the  period  between  getting  up  and  breakfast- 
time.  Many  literary  men  work  before  break- 
fast, but  this  I  regard  as  a  very  dangerous 
habit.  I  try  to  avoid  it,  and  so  far  have  been 
reasonably  successful.  I  rest  until  breakfast- 
time.  This  gives  the  person  a  zest  for  the 
morning  meal. 

"  For  breakfast  the  simplest  food  is  the  best. 
I  begin  with  oyster  stew,  then  some  cold 
chicken,  next  a  few  small  lamb  chops  and 
mashed  potatoes,  after  that  a  good-sized  beef- 
steak and  fried  potatoes,  then  a  rasher  of  bacon 
with  fried  eggs  ( three ),  followed  by  a  whitefish 
or  two,  the  meal  being  completed  with  some 
light,  wholesome  pastry,  mince  pie  for  prefer- 
ence. Care  should  be  taken  to  avoid  tea  or 
coffee,  and  I  think  a  word  of  warning  ought  to 
go  forth  against  milk.  The  devastation  that 
milk  has  wrought  among  literary  men  is  fearful 
to  contemplate.  They  begin,  thinking  that  if 
they  find  it  is  hurting  them,  they  can  break  off, 
but  too  often  before  they  awaken  to  their 
danger  the  habit  has  mastered  them.  I  avoid 
anything  at  breakfast  except  a  large  tumbler  of 
brandy,  with  a  little  soda  water  added  to  give  it 
warmth  and  strength. 


METHODS    OF    AUTHORS.  169 

"No  subject  is  of  more  importance  to  the 
literary  aspirant  than  the  dividing  of  the  hours 
of  work.  I  divide  the  hours  just  as  minutely  as 
I  can,  and  then  take  as  few  of  the  particles  as 
possible.  I  owe  much  of  my  success  in  life  to 
the  fact  that  I  never  allow  work  to  interfere 
with  the  sacred  time  between  breakfast  and 
dinner.  That  is  devoted  to  rest  and  thought. 
Much  comfort  can  be  realized  during  these 
hours  by  thinking  what  a  stir  you  would  make 
in  the  literary  world  if  you  could  hire  a  man 
like  Howells  for  five  dollars  a  week  to  do  your 
work  for  you.  Such  help,  I  find,  is  very  diffi- 
cult to  obtain,  and  yet  some  people  hold  that 
the  labor  market  is  overcrowded.  The  great 
task  of  the  forenoon  should  be  preparation  for 
the  mid-day  meal.  The  thorough  enjoyment  of 
this  meal  has  much  to  do  with  a  man's  success 
in  this  life. 

"  Of  course,  I  do  not  insist  that  a  person 
should  live  like  a  hermit.  Because  he  break- 
fasts frugally,  that  is  no  reason  why  he  should 
not  dine  sumptuously.  Some  people  dine  at 
six  and  merely  lunch  at  noon.  Others  have 
their  principal  meal  in  the  middle  of  the  day, 
and  have  a  light  supper.  There  is  such  merit 
in  both  these  plans  that  I  have  adopted  both. 
I  take  a  big  dinner  and  a  light  lunch  at  noon, 
and  a  heavy  dinner  and  a  simple  supper  in  the 
evening.  A  person  whose  brain  is  constantly 


1 70  METHODS    OF    AUTHORS. 

worried  about  how  he  can  shove  off  his  work  on 
somebody  else  has  to  have  a  substantial  diet. 
The  bill  of  fare  for  dinner  should  include  every- 
thing that  abounds  in  the  market  —  that  the 
literary  man  can  get  trusted  for. 

"  After  a  good  rest  when  dinner  is  over,  re- 
main quiet  until  supper-time,  so  that  the  brain 
will  not  be  too  much  agitated  for  the  trials  that 
come  after  that  meal. 

"  I  am  a  great  believer  in  the  old  adage  of 
'  early  to  bed.'  We  are  apt  to  slight  the  wisdom 
of  our  forefathers ;  but  they  knew  what  they 
were  about  when  they  advised  early  hours.  I 
always  get  to  bed  early,  —  say  two  or  three 
in  the  morning.  I  do  not  believe  in  night 
work.  It  is  rarely  of  a  good  quality.  The 
brain  is  wearied  with  the  exertions  of  the  day 
and  should  not  be  overtaxed.  Besides,  the 
time  can  be  put  in  with  less  irksomeness  at  the 
theatre,  or  in  company  with  a  lot  of  congenial 
companions  who  avoid  the  stimulating  effects 
of  tea,  coffee,  and  milk.  Tobacco,  if  used  at 
all,  should  be  sparingly  indulged  in.  I  never 
allow  myself  more  than  a  dozen  cigars  a  day ; 
although,  of  course,  I  supplement  this  with  a 
pipe. 

"  When  do  I  do  my  literary  work  ?  Why, 
next  day,  of  course." 


THE  WRITER 

is  a  monthly  magazine  to  interest  and  help  all  literary  workers. 
It  was  started  in  1887,  and  is  now  ( 1894 )  in  its  seventh  volume. 
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Beginners  and  expert  writers  alike  will  find  THE  WRITER 
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writer  can  learn  something  from  the  experiences  of  other 
writers  related  in  its  pages.  Such  an  interesting  and  useful 
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six  bound  volumes  of  the  magazine  contain  has  never  been 
printed  elsewhere. 

The  price  of  THB  WRITER  is  ten  cents  a  number,  or  one 
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THE  WRITER   PUBLISHING   CO., 

282  Washington  st.  (  Rooms  9  and  10), 
P.  O.  Box  1905.  Boston,  Mats. 


USE 


"Goodrich' 

Penholders 


The  very  best  for  prose  and  poetry, 
and  quite  satisfactory  for  acknowledging 
receipt  of  publishers'  checks. 

Bear  in  mind  the  name, 


GOODRICH, 


Akron, 
Ohio. 


LITERARY    .    FOLKS 

SHOULD    USK 

"Goodrich"  Erasers 

•       AND       • 

Rubber  Bands. 

Always  satisfactory  and  very  conducive  to 
choice    gems    of   thought. 


27 


ALL  DEALERS  KEEP  THEM. 


51 


Don't  forget  the  name, 


GOODRICH, 


Akron, 
Ohio. 


THE    WRITER'S 

LITERARY    BUREAU 

(Established  in  1887) 

gives  frank  and  honest  advice  to  writers  of  MSS.  on  any  sub- 
ject, sells  MSS.  on  commission,  revises  MSS.,  makes  type- 
written copies  if  desired,  and  directs  MSS.  into  their 
proper  channels  —  fulfils,  in  short,  every  function  required 
between  author  and  editor  or  publisher.  The  Writer's 
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office  in  the  country.  In  the  seven  years  of  its  existence  the 
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promptness,  painstaking,  and  trustworthy  judgment.  It  refers 
to  editors  everywhere. 

The  number  of  writers  who  know  where  to  find  the  best 
market  for  their  productions  is  exceedingly  limited.  Such  a 
knowledge  implies  a  long  and  familiar  acquaintance  with 
periodical  literature. 

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which  it  is  offered  as  a  glove  to  the  hand.  If  it  does  not,  the 
editor  will  decline  it  as  "  unsuitable,"  usually  adding  that 
"  this  does  not  necessarily  imply  lack  of  merit." 

It  occasionally  happens  that  an  article,  otherwise  acceptable, 
is  refused  because  at  one  or  two  points  it  fails  to  meet  require- 
ments. 

The  editor  seldom  cares  to  make  necessary  explanations  in 
such  cases,  and  therefore  simply  "  begs  leave  to  decline  with 
thanks." 

It  was  with  a  view  to  rendering  much-needed  assistance  to 
authors  in  marketing  their  manuscripts  that  The  Writer's 
Literary  Bureau  was  organized  in  September,  1887,  under  the 
management  of  a  gentleman  who  for  many  years  had  been  con- 
nected with  one  of  our  largest  publishing  houses.  The  en- 
terprise has  prospered  and  developed,  until  now  the  Bureau  is 
prepared,  and  offers,  to  undertake  every  sort  of  work  between 
author  and  publisher. 

TO    AUTHORS: 

The  Bureau  offers  to  read  manuscripts  and  give  ( i )  specific 
advice  as  to  their  disposal  5(2)  general  advice  based  on  the  de- 
fects observed ;  ( 3 )  thorough  grammatical  and  rhetorical 
revision  ;  ( 4 )  one  or  more  typewritten  copies. 

A  charge  for  these  services  will  be  made  as  follows:  — 

(  i.  )  For  reading  any  manuscript  containing  not  more  than 
2,000  words,  and  giving  a  list  of  the  periodicals  to  which  it  is 
best  suited,  50  cents ;  if  the  manuscript  contains  more  than 
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the  fee  for  reading. 

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hundred  words.  For  dialect,  or  poetry,  or  other  work  of  un- 
usual difficulty,  ten  cents  a  hundred  words.  No  manuscript 
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dgiP"  For  reading  a  book  manuscript  containing  more  than 
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in  advance. 

The  payment  for  service  (  i )  is  essential  in  the  case  of  every 
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is  optional  with  the  sender.  In  other  words,  no  manuscript 
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reading.  Services  (  2  )  and  (  4  )  will  not  be  performed  without 
the  fees  in  hand. 

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closes double  postage,  the  Bureau  will  send  the  manuscript  to 
the  publisher  most  likely  to  buy  it,  with  directions  if  the  manu- 
script is  declined  to  return  it  to  the  author.  In  either  case,  a 
list  of  periodicals  to  which  it  is  best  suited  will  be  sent  to  the 
author  direct. 

TO     PUBLISHERS  : 

The  Bureau  offers  a  great  variety  of  manuscripts,  especially 
in  the  line  of  fiction.  The  Bureau  not  only  has  very  many 
manuscripts  constantly  going  through  its  hands,  but  is  in  con- 
nection with  skilled  writers  in  all  lines,  and  can  secure  manu- 
scripts of  any  sort  at  short  notice. 

MSS.  SOLD  ON  COMMISSION. 

In  consequence  of  many  urgent  requests,  the  Bureau  has 
opened  a  commission  department,  and  will  undertake  the  sale 
of  manuscripts,  when  desired,  on  the  following  terms  :  Every 
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panied by  the  fees  for  reading.  If  the  author  wishes  the  Bureau 
to  act  as  selling  agent,  and  the  manuscript  is  found  to  be  worth 
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tional 'charge  of  ten  cents  for  each  time  that  the  manuscript  is 
sent  out,  to  cover  expense  of  registration,  stationery,  etc. 
When  the  manuscript  is  sold,  any  unexpended  balance  of  the 
postage  deposit  will  be  returned  to  the  author,  together  with  75 
per  cent,  of  the  amount  received  from  the  publisher,  the  Bureau 
retaining  25  per  cent,  as  its  commission.  The  Bureau  will  not 
assume  responsibility  for  loss  or  damage  during  handling  or 
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loss.  Address:  — 

THE    WRITER'S  LITERARY    BUREAU, 
282  Washington  st.  (Rooms  9  and  10), 

P.  O.  Box  1905.  Boston,  Mass. 


WRITING  FOR  THE  PRESS: 

A  Manual  for  Editors,  Reporters,  Corre- 
spondents, and  Printers.  By  ROBERT  LUCE. 
Fourth  edition  (seventh  thousand);  revised  and 
greatly  enlarged.  96  pp.  Cloth,  $1.00. 

"  Writing  for  the  Press"  is  a  practical  handbook  of  the  art 
of  newspaper  writing,  written  by  a  practical  newspaper  man. 
There  is  no  "padding"  in  it;  almost  every  line  contains  a 
useful  hint  or  suggestion  about  the  proper  preparation  of  news- 
paper "copy,"  and  a  wonderful  amount  of  information  of  use 
to  writers  is  crowded  into  its  carefully-written  pages.  The 
work  is  the  result  of  the  practical  experience  of  the  author  as 
desk  editor  on  the  Boston  Globe,  and  was  written  in  the  main 
from  notes  made  while  handling  MS.  there  and  elsewhere. 

Four  editions  of  "  Writing  for  the  Press  "  have  been  required. 
For  each  edition  the  work  has  been  revised  and  enlarged,  so 
that  it  has  grown  from  fortv-two  to  ninety-six  pages, —  yet,  it 
is  believed,  without  the  addition  of  a  useless  sentence.  New 
matter  has  been  added  partly  to  make  the  book  more  useful  to 
newspaper  writers,  and  partly  to  bring  within  its  scope  all 
other  writers.  Therefore,  those  who  bought  copies  of  earlier 
editions  will  find  it  desirable  to  buy  copies  of  the  fourth 
edition  as  well. 

That  literary  workers  of  every  class  will  find  "Writing  for 
the  Press  "  exceedingly  helpful,  both  for  study  and  for  refer- 
ence, is  shown  by  these  subject-headings  :  The  Preparation  of 
Copy  ;  How  to  Write  Clearly  ;  Grammar,  Good  and  Bad ;  Use 
and  Misuse  of  Common  Words  and  Phrases  ( with  several 
hundred  examples);  Mixed  Metaphors;  Slang;  The  Use  of 
Titles  ;  Puzzling  Plurals ;  Condensation  ;  Points  on  Proof-read- 
ing ;  Addressing  Editors  ;  Getting  into  Print,  etc.  The  book 
is  one  that  every  writer  should  keep  upon  his  desk  for  constant 
reference  and  study. 

Newspaper  editors,  who  are  naturally  the  best  judges  of  the 
value  of  such  a  work,  all  commend  Mr.  Luce's  book.  For 
instance,  the  Boston  Advertiser  says  of  it :  "  It  is  a  remarka- 
bly compact  and  useful  little  manual,  full  of  the  wisest  and 
most  practical  suggestions  in  regard  to  the  mechanical  require- 
ments for  the  proper  preparation  of  manuscript ;  the  right  use 
of  doubtful  and  frequently  misused  words ;  punctuation ; 
matters  of  style;  and  errors  of  arrangement."  The  Critic 
says:  "  1 1  is  full  of  sound  advice  and  practical  suggestions." 

Quantities  of  the  book  have  been  bought  by  the  managers  of 
leading  daily  newspapers  for  distribution  among  their  editors, 
reporters,  and  correspondents,  —  among  others  by  the  Boston 
Herald,  Globe,  Journal,  and  Transcript,  the  New  York 
World,  and  the  Chicago  News.  Special  rates  will  be  made  to 
newspaper  managers  on  quantities  for  distribution  in  this  way. 

The  new  edition  of  "  Writing  for  the  Press  "  is  handsomely 
bound  in  cloth,  and  will  be  sent,  post-paid,  on  receipt  of  price, 
ONE  DOLLAR.  Address  :  — 

THE  WRITER   PUBLISHING   CO., 

P.  O.  Box  1905,  Boston,  Mass. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY— TEL.  NO.  642-3405 
This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


JUH 


- 


JUN2V69-1QPI 


CQAM  DEPT. 


LD  21A-40m-2,'69 
(J6057slO)476— A-32 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


YC126337 


